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A new study published in the Journal of School Violence looked at assessing the relationship between exposure to violence and perceptions of school safety and emergency preparedness in the context of lockdown drills.

“Our study considers the relationship between students’ participation in lockdown drills, their exposure to violence at school, and their perceptions of school safety and emergency preparedness,” study author Jaclyn Schildkraut told us. “This is a relationship that we and other researchers had not considered all together before - some people have looked at the intersection of exposure to violence and school safety, while others, myself included, have looked at the relationship between drills and safety, but again, never all together.”

One of the first studies from the project showed that students felt slightly less safe but significantly more prepared after participating in lockdown drills and training as compared to when the project started (before either took place). The research team was curious if there were other factors that contributed to this disparity, which is why they thought to look at the role of exposure to violence, which was particularly important as the study was conducted in an urban, inner city school district where exposure to violence is often more common (compared to suburban or rural districts).

“As we listed in the study, based on previous research, we expected that there would be a negative relationship between perceived safety and exposure to violence, such that students who were exposed to more violence would perceive their schools to be less safe,” Schildkraut told us. “We also expected that the more students were exposed to violence, the more prepared they would feel to respond to emergencies.”

When looping in the role of the drills and training (as recorded by time in the study), the researchers expected that the relationship between violence exposure and safety would weaken, with the relationship between violence exposure and emergency preparedness strengthening, over time (reaching its highest at the third time point in the study, which was after the introduction of training and participation in the second lockdown drill).

“This study topic chose me,” Schildkraut told us. “I grew up in the Parkland area, and about three weeks after the mass shooting back home (at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018), I hosted an already scheduled school safety symposium. The director of public safety for the district the research was conducted in was in the audience and expressed an interest in partnering to help improve safety in the district while creating an opportunity for me and my colleagues to do research.”

As part of the project, research was conducted across six phases. The researchers first collected baseline surveys from students (as well as their educators, though this is not part of the current study) that allowed them to collect data on a number of different measures, though safety, preparedness, and exposure to violence were the most relevant to the current study. They then carried out a round of lockdown drills (meaning one drill in each school in the district) without them having any training. After the drill, they did a follow-up survey (using the same instrument), which allowed them to assess any potential impacts of that drill on those different measures. Following the holidays, they provided comprehensive training to the schools before conducting a second round of lockdown drills. They then did a third survey with students, which enabled them not only to consider the impacts of continued participation in lockdown drills but also what role the introduction of training might have. This was particularly important since people often assume that drills are training, when in fact, they are different and serve different functions: training is designed to teach people what to do (e.g., the steps of a given procedure), while drills allow them to practice those steps to build skill mastery.

“The main finding of the study was that while students who were exposed to violence did perceive their schools to be less safe, which was consistent with previous research, participating in the drills and training actually helped to mitigate that relationship. In other words, going through the drills and training helped to reduce the impact of exposure to violence on how safe the students felt,” Schildkraut told us. “Interestingly, the more students were exposed to violence, the less prepared they felt (overall) to respond to emergencies, including those that would necessitate a lockdown drill. And going through the drills and training did not seem to offset or temper this relationship, even though, on its own (without consideration of exposure to violence), going through the drills and training led students to report feeling more prepared to respond to emergencies.”

The researchers weren’t surprised with the results but rather excited to be able to demonstrate another way in which lockdown drills can play and important and positive function in schools. Outside of their initial finding about the relationship between just perceived safety and the training/drills, they have found a number of different positive impacts of participation in these practices including lesser perceptions of fear of harm and the likelihood of school shootings, as well as lower anxiety and greater well-being. Of course, these findings do not translate to all emergency preparedness practices or even all lockdown drills but rather those that are conducted using trauma-informed principles (e.g., always calling a drill as a drill, avoiding the use of sensorial techniques, adults modeling calm behaviors, and providing opportunities to debrief at the end).

“I think the most important thing that the results highlight is the need for schools to use a trauma-informed approach to conducting lockdown drills and other emergency preparedness practices,” Schildkraut told us. “When we do something thoughtfully and carefully, it provides a number of benefits, including those we wouldn’t necessarily imagine like mitigating the harmful effects of exposure to violence. Ensuring that schools are using these techniques must be a priority and will help to avoid the news stories of “drills gone wrong” and will hopefully temper concerns (or at least provide a counter perspective) about the effects of drills on students.”