Education
Students to Help Create Database of School Shootings
U.S. school shooting statistics are misleading, UT-Dallas team hopes to fix this.
In light of recent misinformation, Criminologist Nadine Connell and students from The University of Texas at Dallas are teaming up to investigate the number of school shootings that have occurred in America since 1990.
Police often do not specify school shooting statistics nor clarify their differences, yet these essential details help others to better understand their environments and take necessary precautions.
“Communities and schools need proper information to determine what their risk factors are and how they can best approach them,” Connell said in an interview with KERA radio station in Dallas.
The team will study how guns have affected students in grades K-12, specifically if someone was injured or killed by a firearm on campus. Due to data collection limitations on the internet, Connell and her students are unable to gather statistics earlier than 1990.
They hope to find ways to create spaces that are welcoming, educational and safe but consider all potential threats – not just school shootings.
The database should be available to the public by the end of 2018.
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