OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to examine the association between weapon carrying and victimization on school property, fear of attending school and the co-occurance of other risk and problem behaviors on school property. The association between academic achievement, participating in school sports and same-gender sexual behavior and weapon carrying at school was also examined.
DESIGN: The study was conducted on a random sample of 2,934 9th-12th grade students in Massachusetts from the 1993 Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Students were 50.9% female, 78% White, 7% Black, 6% Hispanic, 5% Asian or Pacific Islander and 1% Native-American, with a mean age of 16 years. Weapon carrying in school in the previous 30 days was analyzed as a dichotomous variable. Those variables found to be significantly (p ≤ 0.01) associated with weapon carrying in school were analyzed by multiple logistic regression analysis. For the independent variables measured on ordinal scales, the odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) represent the change in the risk of weapon carrying associated with the change in each ranked category of the independent variable.
