User:Lbellows/Sandbox

Design Proposal

Purpose of the Study

The first purpose of the study is to examine the prevalence of bullying based on perceived sexual orientation and gender identity or expression in certain school environments. This study will be focused on the prevalence of bullying in elementary schools. Simple descriptive statistics gathered should be able to give local education officials, as well as state and possibly even federal officials and politicians, better information about bullying in the public schools. Previous research suggests that a multitude of factors can influence the prevalence of school bullying. While officials who design and implement public policy may find some of these factors, such as regional culture, more difficult to address, changes in other policies, even at the local school level, may reduce the prevalence of bullying. Therefore, the second purpose of this study, and possibly the major purpose, is to assess the impacts of state and local policy and teacher characteristics on bullying based on perceived sexual orientation and gender identity and expression.

Research Question

This project has three basic research questions, but these questions can be broken up into numerous subquestions:

• How prevalent is bullying based on perceived sexual orientation and gender identity or expression in U.S. public elementary and middle schools?

1. How prevalent is physical harassment based on perceived sexual orientation or gender identity or expression?
2. How prevalent is verbal harassment based on perceived sexual orientation or gender identity or expression?
3. How prevalent is discriminatory speech based on perceived sexual orientation or gender identity or expression?

• What are the impacts of teacher characteristics on bullying and responsiveness based on perceived sexual orientation and gender identity or expression?

1. What are the impacts of teacher attitudes on various types of bullying and responsiveness?
2. What are the impacts of teacher training on various types of bullying and responsiveness?

• What are the impacts of policies on bullying based on perceived sexual orientation and gender identity or expression?

1. What is the impact of local school policies on various types of bullying?
2. What is the impact of district policies on various types of bullying?
3. What are the impacts of state policies on various types of bullying?

While some of the information for these questions will be available from administrative records, in particular state or district level policies, most information will need to be gathered from teachers and school administrators using surveys. One assumption of this study is that bullying is bad for students. Certainly, physical harassment often causes harm to the victim. Previous research also suggests that verbal harassment and a school environment that tolerates discriminatory speech can harm students: for example, gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth may be more likely to skip school and drop out than their peers. While a closer examination of the impact of bullying or discriminatory speech on younger students would be interesting, these questions are outside the scope of this project.

Notes on Previous Research

For over the past ten years, research produced by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) has suggested that sexual minority students in the United States are frequently harassed in their schools: their 2009 National School Climate Survey indicated that nine out of ten lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender [LGBT] middle and high school students experience harassment at school. However, GLSEN only surveys LGBT youth and identifies its sample by distributing materials to LGBT youth organizations and online. In addition, by surveying only self-identified LGBT students, GLSEN leaves out other potential victims of bullying based on perceived sexual orientation and gender identity or expression: one 1995 study in Seattle suggested that as many as six percent of heterosexual students were bullied or harassed because they were perceived to be gay. Finally, little previous research exists on the prevalence of this type of bullying among elementary school students. However, despite GLSEN’s questionable sampling methods, their previous studies do identify several factors that may impact the number of bullying incidents and overall school climate. In terms of teacher characteristics, their studies indicate that many LGBT students do not even report harassment because their teachers have ignored harassment incidents in the past. Some LGBT students even report that teachers were present at the incident and did nothing. Their research also suggests that the inclusion of “sexual orientation” and “gender identity and expression” in anti-bullying policies may help reduce incidents of LGBT harassment.

Target Population and Sampling Frame

The target population for this study would be third-fifth grade public elementary school students and third-fifth grade teachers. Ideally, a short survey about harassment incidents will be given to third-fifth grade students, and their teachers will take a slightly longer survey that will ask about harassment incidents as well as teacher attitudes, training, and school policies. This would allow the researcher to compare responses from teachers about harassment incidents with student responses. However, since students will all be under eighteen, it may be too difficult to obtain permission to give them this survey. In that case, data on number of bullying incidents could be gathered only from teacher reports. The sampling frame for this study can be obtained through state lists of school districts and school district lists of elementary schools, since, ideally, this survey will have a national scope. In taking the sample, the survey administrator will first need to obtain lists of school districts within each of the states, the District of Columbia, and the territories. Then the survey administrator will need to randomly sample school districts from these lists. The survey administrator will then need to contact those school districts in order to obtain permission from them to give the surveys. Then the survey administrator will need a list of elementary schools within each sampled school districts in order to randomly sample elementary schools. Then the principals of those elementary schools will be contacted about the survey.

Bella Norman Sleeping

External Links

Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network