A Case Study on Campus Violence and the Impact on Students, Research Proposal Example

Introduction

Campus violence can be viewed as consisting of physical, verbal and sexual acts that cause physical or mental abuse or both. Just as in other places, campus violence can be in the form of physical assault by weapons or not, homicide, verbal abuse, bullying/mobbing, and sexual harassment. Verbal abuse could be through words or words that humiliate, discriminate, or show disrespect to individual students or cross-section of students. Bullying is usually seen as verbal or physically expressed behavior of individual students or student groups that frustrates, bother, scare, or undermine individual students or student groups. Offensive characters like this happens once or several times. Events like this have resulted in chaotic situations in campuses: general student uproar, property destruction and protests with violent acts. Occasionally, campus violence has resulted in heinous crimes and other vices such as murder and rape among others.  Racial motivated violence is less common nowadays however, on every occasion it occurs, it can be deadly. In campus, sexually related violence is common; sometimes in the form of stalking and other unwarranted advances.

Stament of the Problem

Campus violence, an increasing phenomenon in colleges is a serious issue. The fear of violence is greatly affecting academic performance and quality of social life in campuses. Parents are also getting afraid to send their children to colleges fearing for their lives and worried about bad influence. This by extension affects the integrity and essence of college education.

The following research problems are:

1. In both religious and secular colleges, violence occurs almost in equal measure despite remarkably different attitudes and backgrounds.
2. Colleges are aware of persistent violent behavior within their student populace, why haven’t they formulated a concerted approach to alleviate the menace.
3. In a bid to trim up their public image, some colleges are known to underreport violent incidences.
4. Research Objectives

Given the report of issues presented above; the research objectives are as follows:

1. To establish the underlying cause of campus violence in all types of colleges and identify mitigating measures.
2. To establish measures taken by the students, colleges, and government across different states to stem runaway campus violence.
3. To identify which particular colleges tend to experience more than average violence levels and what motivates the violence.
4. To analyze the effects of campus violence on student lifestyles, academic performance and their parents take on the violence.
5. Literature Review

Random acts of shooting at some institutions have ignited worry from parents and students alike about the safety and protection of campuses and colleges. After studying a few incidences of violent crime in campuses and other institutions of higher learning, an unambiguous pattern emerges on some of the tragic events. The House Labor and Education Committee held a hearing entitled “Best Observations for Transforming Campuses.” Before the outdoing of the Cleric act that requires campuses to make public yearly crime statistics for their institutions, there was minimal information on campus crime to address violence patterns and identify best prevention and response strategies. The statement indicates disputes with quality of data provided by colleges. Most of these challenges were related to completeness and accuracy of data since campuses are forced to present favorable image to recruit students. Sexual assaults are serious concern to colleges. Teachings reviewed in the Campus Violence Newspaper, approximately15-25% of female students account for being the victims and casualties of rape and approximately 5-10% of campus men confess forcing intercourse on somebody. The report further indicates that, most sexual assaults involved familiar parties. Less than 25% of sexual assaults were perpetrated by strangers. Alcohol and drug use seen to provide the enabling circumstances for sexual assaults.

4. Methodology

The methodology is split into the following: research design, population and sample, research tools, data collection, protection of human subjects, limitations of the study, data analysis, and the results.

• Research Methodology

A survey to be conducted to show the occurrence of all kinds of campus violence, as well as contributing elements, effects, and reactions at personal and institutional levels. Quantitative data is to be gathered via questionnaires. Group or conference interviews and one on one interview are to be carried out to obtain qualitative data.

• Sampling

The research setting of this study is to suppose to occur in the Mid West. In the Mid West, there is a wide variety of colleges.

In the qualitative section aiming to confirm the definition of campus violence and other aspects, I plan to include six target groups as follows:

1. Representatives of Colleges.
2. Students and their leaders.
3. Campus personnel
4. Law enforcement authorities.
5. Management Colleges
6. Parents and lectures

For the quantitative part, I plan to equitably distribute between the sexes based on their share of campus population.

• Research Tools

Questions will be availed for center group discussions and comprehensive interviews. The in-depth interviews will cover the college management, student populace, the law enforcement authorities and the parents. Whenever face to face interviews are impossible, telephone interviews will be conducted.

• Data Collection:

Data will be collected between Match and June 2013. Qualitative data will be collected via center group and comprehensive interviews, with recording if permission is granted. Hand-written notes will also be taken from the field as well. Since campus violence can sometimes be a touchy issue, confidentiality, privacy, and safety of the subjects will be protected throughout the processes of qualitative data collection.

• Protection of Human subject matters:

Prior to data collection, in print permission must be acquired from each campus. All individuals involved in group interviews will be requested to give some kind of clearly expressed permission after the discussion of the research project’s goals, processes, privacy, as well as its importance and possibility of downsides. The respondents will be at freedom to withdraw from the study anytime or not answer any question at all. We will guarantee to them that their information will be treated with utmost integrity and privacy. If it comes to our realization that respondent might suffer individual harm or victimization as a result of participation; we will take precautionary measures.

• Data Analysis:

Quantitative data will be analyzed by SPSS 10.0, a premier data analytic software program. Descriptive data will be used to depict the demographic possessions of the sample. The differences of the occurrences of violence across various elements will be analyzed through Chi-square. Qualitative data will be analyzed by content analysis.

5.0 Results:

The outcome of this study basing quantitative and qualitative data analysis will be on the following premise.

1. Demographic characteristics of the sample
2. Magnitude, characteristics, scope of violence
3. Influencing factors in the context of campus violence
4. Effects and impact of violence on campus
5. Individual, institutional, and systematic responses towards violence
6. Anti-violence strategies

Works Cited

“Campus Violence Unacceptable – Rifai.” McClatchy – Tribune Business News Jan 06 2011. ABI/INFORM Complete. Web. 27 Jan. 2013.

“Curry School of Education.” Curry School of Education. N.p., Web. 27 Jan. 2013.

“Security on Campus, Inc. Lauds Inclusion of Campus Sexual Violence Prevention & Response Provisions in VAWA Bill.” PR Newswire Dec 01 2011. ABI/INFORM Complete. Web. 27 Jan. 2013.

Jennifer, A. Rosenblatt, and J. Furlong Michael. “Assessing the Reliability and Validity of Student Self-Reports of Campus Violence.” Journal of Youth and Adolescence 26.2 (1997): 187-202. ABI/INFORM Complete. Web. 27 Jan. 2013.