Recruiting

School Safety

Sponsor:

Teachers College, Columbia University

Code:

NCT06153316

Conditions

Mental Health Outcomes

Adverse Childhood Experiences

Perceived School Safety

Educational Outcomes

Eligibility Criteria

Sex: All

Age: 11 - 65

Healthy Volunteers: Accepted

Interventions

School shooting incident

Study Details

Brief summary:

This study hypothesize that school safety strategies may contribute to poor mental health and distress among various school populations and proposes the following research questions to be answered through this study:

1. Is there a significant difference in the prevalence of mental health outcomes, perceived school safety, and academic engagement between early adolescent and adolescent students (grades 6 - 12) at schools that have experienced a school shooting and those that have not?
2. Are existing interventions to promote school safety and security associated with poor mental health outcomes among students and school staff?
3. Does the strength of this association between school safety interventions and mental health outcomes differ among students and teachers in those schools who have experienced a school shooting versus among students and teachers in those schools who never experienced a school shooting? And, among our sample of students, are these associations moderated by their ACE history? Participants will be asked to self-report data on their mental health and wellness, and perceived school safety through a survey.

Researchers will compare the surveys from the participants from exposure schools (those who experienced a gun shooting incident) with surveys from the participants from non-exposure schools (those who have not experienced a gun shooting incident)

Conditions

Mental Health Outcomes

Adverse Childhood Experiences

Perceived School Safety

Educational Outcomes

Study ID

NCT06153316

Start date

Apr 26, 2024

Status verified date

Nov, 2024

Completion date

Dec, 2025

Anticipated

Primary completion date

Dec, 2025

Anticipated

Eligibility Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

Sex: All

Age: 11 - 65

Healthy Volunteers: Accepted

School-level Inclusion criteria:

For a school to be considered for participation, it should meet all the following criteria:

1. The school must consent to participate in the study.
2. Gun shooting incident

  • For exposure schools: Must have experienced a gun shooting incident between 1/1/2015-12/31/2022 .
  • For non-exposure schools: there should not have been a gun shooting incident between 1/1/2011-12/31/2022.
3. Must have the student population of interest that is middle through grade 12, and-

  • For exposure schools: At least one grade that experienced the shooting should still be studying at the school.
  • For non-exposure schools: must have the same grade levels as the pair-matched case school and none of them should have been exposed to any gun shooting incident at that school.
4. Must be a public school.

  • All non-public schools (e.g., private, charter, parochial schools) and schools outside of the middle-12 range (e.g. daycares, only elementary, preschools, and universities) are not eligible for the study.

Individual-level Inclusion Criteria:

Principals: Must be the current Principal of the participating school. Teachers: Must be a current teacher at the participating school. Students: Must be a current student at the participating school studying in grades 6-12.

Study Design

Enrollment

2500 participants

Anticipated

Interventions and Outcome Measures

Arms

Exposure Schools

From the dataset that matches study criteria, randomly select three K-12 schools that have recently experienced mass violence or attempted mass violence (< two years prior) and three K-12 schools that have experienced mass violence or attempted mass violence less recently (> two years ago). Students, teachers and principals of these schools will be eligible to participate.

Non-exposure schools

For the study, the non-exposure schools will be matched to exposure schools on five key variables: state, urban/non-urban, school type (public/private), school level (elementary/middle/high), and school size, and selected from the complete database of K-12 schools across the United states. Students, teachers and principals of these schools will be eligible to participate.

Interventions

School shooting incident

The school has experienced a gun shooting incident within the past 2 years of the study (for 3 case schools) and prior to 2 years (for 3 case schools). Incidents where a gun was displayed but no shot was fired, or where a shot was fired by police or security officer will not be included.

Primary outcome measure

  • Mental Health of students [ Time Frame: through survey completion, an average of 6 months ]
  • Mental Health of Staff [ Time Frame: through survey completion, an average of 6 months ]
  • Well-being of Students [ Time Frame: through survey completion, an average of 6 months ]
  • Well-being of Staff [ Time Frame: through survey completion, an average of 6 months ]
  • Adverse Childhood Experiences [ Time Frame: through survey completion, an average of 6 months ]
  • Positive Childhood Experiences [ Time Frame: through survey completion, an average of 6 months ]

Central Contacts and Locations

Central contacts

Sonali Rajan

212-678-3458sr2345@tc.columbia.edu

Charles Branas

212-305-8755c.branas@columbia.edu

Locations

Teachers College, Columbia University

Recruiting

New York, New York, United States, 10027

Contacts

Sonali Rajan

212-678-3458sr2345@tc.columbia.edu

More Information

Sponsor

Teachers College, Columbia University

Last update posted

Sep 16, 2025

Last verified

Nov, 2024

Keywords

  • School gun violence, School safety, mental health, ACEs

Trial information was received from ClinicalTrials.gov and was last updated on 2026-09-10. This information was provided to ClinicalTrials.gov by Teachers College, Columbia University on 2025-09-16.