This document reports on an experimental investigation of school resource officer-embedded multidisciplinary teams' effectiveness in reducing risk behaviors in students, and specifically the average number of disciplinary incidents over the course of three years.
This research report describes an experimental investigation of the effectiveness of school resource officer (SRO)-embedded multidisciplinary teams in their ability to reduce risk behaviors in students. The report describes a process for integrating school safety officers into middle school and high school settings so that they form an integral part of the planning and implementation of school safety plans, and establish strong lines of communication, and relationships with educators. The report focuses on three research questions: if schools with SROs demonstrate significantly greater declines in student disciplinary incidences than schools with no SROs; if schools with SROs who receive the enhanced training (intervention) show greater declines in student disciplinary incidences than schools whose SROs receive only the standard training; and do the answers to the first two questions vary by school subpopulations, such as students from racial or ethnic minority backgrounds, gender, and socioeconomic status. Results indicated that while schools with a state-trained SRO did have a lower rate of increase in disciplinary incidents compared to schools with no SRO, the SRO working with schools in a multidisciplinary team showed a significant decrease in the average number of incidents over time.