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A meta-analysis of longitudinal partial correlations between school violence and mental health, school performance, and criminal or delinquent acts

NCJ Number
305006
Journal
Psychological Bulletin Volume: 147 Issue: 2 Dated: 2021 Pages: 115–133
Author(s)
Polanin, J. R.; Espelage, D. L.; Grotpeter, J. K.; Spinney, E.; Ingram, K. M.; Valido, A.; El Sheikh, A.; Torgal, C.; Robinson, L.
Date Published
2021
Length
19 pages
Annotation

Since across primary and secondary studies, variation in how and how much school violence relates to adverse outcomes has persisted, the purpose of this systematic review and meta-analysis, therefore, was to clarify this uncertainty by synthesizing the longitudinal relations.

Abstract

We conducted exhaustive searching procedures, implemented rigorous screening and coding processes, and estimated an underused effect size, the partial correlation from multiple regression models, before estimating a random-effects meta-analysis using robust variance estimation. We meta-analyzed 114 independent studies, totaling 765 effect sizes across 95,618 individual participants. The results of the overall analyses found a statistically significant longitudinal relation between school violence, in any role, and the aggregated outcome variables (rp = .06). Given that this effect size inherently controls for multiple potential confounding covariates, we consider the relation’s magnitude clinically meaningful. We end by discussing ways practitioners and researchers may use these analyses when implementing prevention programming and how the field of meta-analysis should more frequently utilize the partial correlation. (Publisher Abstract Provided)