| Physical fighting in school is a concern for school administrators, juvenile justice professionals, and students. This quantitative study examined the involvement of physical fights at school among 5,674 adolescents across the United States via a casual comparative design with a correlational subcomponent. Differences were discovered between bonded adolescents (participants who had strong school attachments, involvements, commitments and beliefs) and not bonded adolescents (participants who did not have strong school attachments, involvements, commitments, and beliefs). A chi-square test of independence was calculated comparing the relationship between bonding and the involvement in physical fights for both cohorts. A significant interaction was found ( x2(1)=39.957, p=.000) indicating that adolescents who were part of the not bonded cohort were more likely to be involved in a physical fight at school than the adolescents in the bonded cohort. Only 6.1% of bonded adolescents were involved in physical fights at school while 15.6% of the not bonded adolescents were involved in physical fights at school. Therefore the results suggest that adolescent school attachments, involvements, commitments, and beliefs seem to be reducing the involvement in physical fights at school. Through the use of logistic regression analysis, the study also found that gender of the adolescent and grades were the two most statistically significant predictors of involvement in physical fights at school. However, the overall relationship among bonds with an adult at school, bonds with a friend at school, involvement in athletics, involvement in academic clubs, grades, commitment to post high school education, class attendance, and gender did not account for a significant proportion of the variability in the involvement of physical fights at school as reflected by the Cox and Snell (R2=.030 or 3%) and the Nagelkerke statistic (R2=.078 or 7.8%). Subsequently, there is a need for further research to determine additional factors which may reduce the involvement in physical fights at school. Additional research on the other types of bonds, involvements, commitments, and beliefs may provide valuable information as to what factors reduce the likelihood of physical fighting at school. |
