By Hsing-Fang Hsieh, Justin Heinze

Abstract. Anonymous tip lines have the potential to improve school safety by providing secure multi-modal reporting systems and enabling a coordinated response between schools, law enforcement and crisis responders. The SS-ARS, developed and implemented by the Sandy Hook Promise (SHP) Foundation, is an educational school safety initiative that trains youth, parents, schools, and communities to recognize warning signs in writing, speaking, or web content that could lead to harmful behaviors towards themselves or others, and to safely report potential threats. SS-ARS combines a school-wide violence prevention program that enhances risk recognition, empowers and engages school communities in violence prevention, and facilitates coordination between schools and law enforcement with a multi-modal ARS. SHP has implemented the Say Something program in schools across the U.S. and trained over 12 million students (Sandy Hook Promise Foundation). In a recent systematic review of anonymous reporting systems (ARS) in U.S. schools, Messman et al. (2021) identified just four empirical studies about the implementation or effectiveness of ARS, but none of these studies used experimental designs. To address this gap of research, we examined the effectiveness of the Say Something Anonymous Reporting System (SS-ARS) program in improving school safety in a cluster randomized control trial in collaboration with the Miami-Dade County Public Schools (M-DCPS). I. Major goals and objectives The current project had four major goals. Our goals for the project were to: 1. Conduct a cluster randomized control trial to test the effectiveness of the SS-ARS intervention to improve participants’ ability to recognize signs of mental duress, violent antecedents, and other risk behaviors, increase reporting of risk behaviors, and improve school community response and school climate over time; 2. Examine changes in violence in school communities (e.g., fights, bullying) and student criminal justice involvement stemming from improved recognition and reporting of risk behaviors; 3. Identify key factors associated with program fidelity, reach, adoption, and sustainability; 4. Perform a cost/effectiveness analysis. We had five main objectives under these goals. Our objectives were to: 1. Recruit 30 schools that will be randomly assigned to receive the SS-ARS program (intervention group) or to receive the usual school safety practices (control condition). 2. Conduct pre- and post-test surveys of students, teachers, and administrators attending both the intervention and control schools. Participants will be followed longitudinally over the study period (from baseline to 18-month post-test survey). 3. Conduct structured interviews with key program personnel at all treatment schools to assess program implementation factors and outcomes. 4. Extract administrative data from both intervention and control school records to assess violent incidents and school response. We will also work with the Miami-Dade Schools Police Department (M-DSPD) to extract geocoded crime data in surrounding neighborhoods.  5. Compare change over time between the intervention and control groups. Analyses will include both student and school-level data. We will examine the stability of change with three data points over 18 months post-intervention. Analyses will examine program effectiveness and the implementation factors associated with program effectiveness.

Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2023. 41p.