Effectiveness of School Violence Prevention Programs in Elementary Schools in the United States: A Systematic Review

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Important study overall, and it should have an impact on the field if improved. Below are some suggested revisions.

1. The literature review notably excluded the growing research on School Shootings, especially those in criminology. While these are rare events, they illustrate the school violence problem's depth and scope and contextualize it. School shootings are statistically infrequent but have outsized impacts on society and drive public discourse regarding gun violence and its prevention. Please integrate these studies more systematically into the literature review. It also raises concerns about the authors' depth of knowledge and expertise on this topic.  

2. Please elaborate on your justification for limiting the systematic review to 2012 to 2023. This seems arbitrary and notably limits the capacity to examine trends over a longer period, which would add considerably to this study's contributions. 

3. Please elaborate on your justification for limiting the systematic review to only elementary schools. Again, this seems arbitrary and notably limits the capacity to examine differences between school levels, which would add considerably to this study's contributions. Depending on the reasoning, excluding these school levels could be seen as a fatal design flaw.

4.  Please provide more details on the following process stated on page 3: "We consulted two experts in the field of K–12 education who were currently  teaching at the university level and utilized a combination of the following text terms..."

Please address and report the following: How were these individuals selected? What systematic procedures were used? Please explain why experts on school violence were not consulted. Also, please justify why the experts and related literature on using public data and open sources to build crime event databases, which rely heavily on keyword searches often utilized in systematic reviews, were not consulted or cited. Again, depending on the reasoning, excluding these details could indicate a lack of expertise and knowledge on the topic. 

5. Much more attention needs to be paid to critiquing the methodological quality of the studies. Please pay particular attention to Shadish, Cook, and Campbell's validity typology, namely threats to internal, construct, and external validity. Patterns and trends from the research cannot be summarized and synthesized without a robust critique of the underlying methods. Knowledge is built upon strong research designs -- this study lacked critical discussion of those designs, and I cannot recommend publication without it.

While this study is laudable in its attempt and scope, at present, it merely summarizes literature and lacks key contributions. But it can be improved, and I hope the authors do so!

I thought the writing was fine, but I recommend less use of passive voice. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you so much for your wonderful comments. We appreciate your guidance and please see the attachment below. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper summarizes existing effect evaluations of applications of school violence prevention programs in elementary schools in the US, based on 14 evaluation studies.

I had difficulties in understanding the different violence phenomena the authors address: on lines 48ff they differentiate between three types of violence: physical aggression, relational aggression and cyberbullying. In the following they add e.g. bullying (68) without saying how these fit into the three basic types of violence introduced before.

I also had difficulties in differentiating between research questions 2 and 3 (130ff.):

“2) Are elementary school programs effective in reducing the occurrence of school violence among children aged 5–12 years?

3) Are tools utilized by elementary school programs effective in reducing school violence?”

Later, on line 208, I found a possible reformulation of research question 3: “what types of tools have been utilized to enhance these programs.”

I recommend a clarification of this possible misunderstanding.

The presented review is based on 14 articles which evaluated relevant intervention programs and which fitted into the authors’ systematic selection criteria.

The paper is informative related to its research question 1 (128): “1) What types of elementary school violence prevention programs have been implemented in the United States?” (cf. 209 ff.). However, the authors should say that their description are based on programs which have been evaluated and are described in their selection of 14 studies.

I am unsecure about the quality of the answers the authors deliver related their research questions 2. I am still astonished about the fact that the authors confined themselves to a qualitative summary instead of trying to summarize the 14 studies they detected in a quantitative meta-analysis. In its present form, the in principle does not more but to repeate the evaluation results of the original papers that went into their review.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you so much for the wonderful comments to help us improve our article. We appreciate your assistance and guidance. Please check our response in attached file. Onwards!

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I found virtually all of the responses to be inadequate and superficial, unfortunately. 

None

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. Please find the detailed responses below and the corresponding revisions and corrections highlighted in the re-submitted files. The authors deeply appreciate your input and recommendations to improve the article on School Violence Prevention Programs in Elementary Schools in the United States: A Systematic Review. We are very grateful for the wonderful feedback provided to improve our article. Onwards.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

I am fine with the authors’ responses to my comments 1-4. I still have two critical remarks.

1 Related to my comment no 5, I had asked why the authors didn’t run a quantitative meta-analysis. The authors now responded that they did so and referred to Table 3 of their paper: “A quantitative approach was also undertaken for the study as found in Table 3, under the heading of primary results. Table 3 includes a quantitative meta-analysis that includes percentages, ratios, and numbers to support Question 2 on the effectiveness of school violence prevention programs at the elementary level.” A quantitative meta-analysis is a summary of effect sizes of single studies going into the analysis, adjusted for sample size. This is not what the authors deliver.

2 The authors added lines 204 to 228 to the first version of the paper, ostensibly on behalf of a recommendation of another reviewer. I have severe problems to understand that new part in the paper – and I am quite familiar with the Shadish, Cook, Campbell elaborations of quasi-experimental designs and their shortcomings. This new part makes sense, but it has to be rewritten. In addition, the authors do not say why they included these considerations here. And they do not inform the reader about the study designs of the 14 studies that went into their review. According to my assessment, the incomplete new part starting at lines 204 has impaired the text.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. Please find the detailed responses below and the corresponding revisions and corrections highlighted in the re-submitted files. The authors deeply appreciate your input and recommendations to improve the article on School Violence Prevention Programs in Elementary Schools in the United States: A Systematic Review. We are very grateful for the wonderful feedback provided to improve our article. Onwards.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf