Award Date

12-15-2018

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Educational Psychology & Higher Education

First Committee Member

Scott Loe

Second Committee Member

Katherine Lee

Third Committee Member

Stephanie Relles

Fourth Committee Member

Joseph Morgan

Number of Pages

96

Abstract

Although school shootings date back to the 1760’s (Dixon, 2005), recent attacks at schools in our country have raised awareness of school violence. This study investigates how students from one large school district responded to the personality pattern items on the Millon Adolescent Clinical Inventory, Second Edition after having made a threat to harm another student or staff member. Personality patterns were investigated in the overall sample, as well as within groups designated to be at a Low/Moderate risk level and High/Imminent risk level following a threat assessment. The minimal Differences between the sample for the current study and the secret service study on school shootings are discussed. The severity of the personality profiles for low/moderate risk level and high/imminent risk level groups are examined. Statistical analysis shows that the behavioral presentation between the groups is more severe in the High/Imminent group than the Low/Moderate group overall. Imminent and high risk cases showed an elevated presence of pathology on the following personality profiles: introversive-schizoid, inhibited-avoidant, doleful-depressive, Unruly-Antisocial, Oppositional-negativistic. Low and Moderate risk cases showed an elevated presence of pathology on the following personality profiles: submissive-dependent and conforming-compulsive.

Keywords

Millon Adolescent Clinical Inventory; personality patterns; risk assessment; school shooting; school violence; threat assessment

Disciplines

Educational Psychology

File Format

pdf

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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