Safe Place Fall Youth Survey

1. Abstract

The Safe Place Fall Youth Survey is a multidimensional psychometric and epidemiological evaluation battery engineered to assess risk factors, protective assets, cognitive orientations toward aggression, and programmatic engagement among children and adolescents participating in urban afterschool youth development centers. Designed for primary implementation within community-based intervention environments—notably by urban youth safety initiatives such as Milwaukee’s Safe & Sound Safe Place network—the instrument consolidates empirically established assessment tools into a unified 64-item self-report questionnaire. The battery measures several distinct psychological and psychosocial constructs, organized across nine operational modules: sociodemographics, social and emotional learning (SEL; including future educational-occupational orientation, general self-worth, and empathic perspective taking), normative attitudes toward guns and violence (incorporating the validated Attitudes Toward Guns and Violence Scale [ATGV]), tactical beliefs regarding conflict de-escalation, substance use perceptions and behaviors (tracking perceived wrongness, risk appraisals, self-regulatory abstinence commitments, and 14-to-30-day prevalence of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and illicit drugs), gang affinity and peer affiliation, procedural justice experiences during municipal police encounters, and program center satisfaction.

Across its core evaluative modules, the survey deploys tailored scaling formats, ranging from 4-point Likert-type response choices (e.g., Very Important to Not at all important; Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree) and frequency metrics (e.g., Never to Always) to discrete behavioral encounter categories and dichotomous indicator flags. Psychometric validation studies across urban youth cohorts (ages 10–18) corroborate sound internal consistency across the primary composite modules, with the embedded 20-item Attitudes Toward Guns and Violence module demonstrating robust reliability (α = .82–.89), the self-worth subscale exhibiting stable consistency (α = .78–.84), and conflict de-escalation subscales yielding acceptable metrics (α = .71–.79). Structural equation modeling and exploratory factor analysis confirm the theoretical dimensional partitioning, establishing solid convergent validity with delinquency markers, self-reported violent behaviors, and afterschool protective protective factors. The battery serves as a critical asset for community psychologists, prevention researchers, juvenile justice interventionists, and program evaluators tracking longitudinal development, socio-cognitive trajectories, and community violence reduction.

2. Keywords

Safe Place Fall Youth Survey, Attitudes Toward Guns and Violence Scale, social and emotional learning, youth violence prevention, adolescent risk behaviors, gang affinity, procedural justice, community-based youth programs, program evaluation, adolescent substance use.

3. Authors

The Safe Place Fall Youth Survey was compiled, adapted, and standardized under the auspices of Safe & Sound, Inc. (Milwaukee, Wisconsin), a high-impact community-based non-profit crime prevention organization founded in 1998, in collaboration with evaluation scientists, regional youth development administrators, and academic partners specializing in urban public health, adolescent psychology, and criminological surveillance. Primary programmatic administration and psychometric refinement were coordinated by the Safe & Sound Youth Development and Evaluation Directorate in conjunction with community-based learning centers designated as “Safe Places” across the greater Milwaukee metropolitan area.

The survey incorporates validated psychometric sub-instruments authored by distinguished behavioral scientists. Specifically, the embedded Attitudes Toward Guns and Violence module utilizes the theoretical and empirical architecture formalized by Jeremy P. Shapiro, Ph.D., and colleagues (Center for Cognitive Therapy and Research / The Guidance Center, Cleveland, Ohio), creators of the nationally validated Attitudes Toward Guns and Violence Scale (ATGV). Additional modules integrate standardized public surveillance metrics derived from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS), the University of Michigan’s Monitoring the Future study (Johnston et al.), and classical self-esteem measurement paradigms adapted from Morris Rosenberg (Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale). Institutional correspondence regarding the administrative survey protocol is historically cataloged via Safe & Sound, Inc., 8050 N. Port Washington Rd., Milwaukee, WI 53217 (Web archive: safesound.org).

4. Purpose

The overarching purpose of the Safe Place Fall Youth Survey is to operationalize, quantify, and track the psychological, relational, and behavioral ecologies of urban youths navigating socio-economically marginalized and high-violence environments. In contemporary community psychology, youth violence and delinquent engagement are recognized not as isolated personal pathologies, but as dynamic outcomes generated at the intersection of individual socio-cognitive frameworks, peer normative influences, neighborhood structural stressors, and systemic institutional interactions. Consequently, the Safe Place Fall Youth Survey fulfills three clinical, educational, and investigative purposes:

• Diagnostic Ecological Profiling and Risk Stratification: The survey functions as an intake, baseline, and longitudinal monitoring instrument to determine the prevalence of risk factors (e.g., weapon-carrying normalization, retaliation-based honor codes, gang involvement, and early onset substance experimentation) versus protective resilience assets (e.g., prosocial aspirational goals, self-efficacy, empathy, and positive appraisal of conflict resolution strategies). Identifying these baseline characteristics permits afterschool staff and youth specialists to tailor targeted socio-emotional curricula to mitigate violent retaliation.
• Community-Based Programmatic Evaluation: Large-scale urban violence prevention programs, such as Safe & Sound’s Safe Places, require rigorous psychometric evaluation tools to demonstrate empirical efficacy to funding agencies, municipal stakeholders, and academic bodies. Administering the survey during the fall term allows organizations to establish baseline operational benchmarks, measure progress against state and national adolescent behavioral norms, and assess whether prolonged program dosage directly correlates with enhanced socio-emotional self-efficacy, reduced weapon glorification, and attenuated gang affinity.
• Surveillance of Police-Youth Institutional Trust: Uniquely situated at the nexus of youth development and community policing, the survey captures granular data on urban youth interactions with municipal law enforcement officers (specifically the Milwaukee Police Department). By measuring the frequency, nature (e.g., arrest, search, proactive crime report, informational assistance), and perceived procedural justice (respectful versus punitive treatment) of these encounters, the scale provides empirically grounded feedback designed to reform institutional policing practices and bridge the trust chasm between urban adolescents and legal authorities.

From an applied research perspective, the survey bridges theoretical cognitive models of aggressive responding with practical community prevention metrics. By assessing both cognitive endorsements (e.g., whether carrying a weapon is perceived to bestow power or deter conflict) and actual health behaviors (e.g., binge drinking, 30-day marijuana usage), researchers can evaluate how changes in internalized moral norms and social scripts mediate shifts in tangible externalizing behaviors.

5. Psychological Construct

The Safe Place Fall Youth Survey measures a multi-tiered psychological architecture composed of interconnected cognitive, emotional, and social dimensions. Each module represents an established psychological or psychosocial construct operationalized for adolescent cognitive capacities.

1. Future Aspirations and Prosocial Goal Setting (Items 7a–7f)

This dimension operationalizes the construct of future time perspective and prosocial goal valence. Grounded in motivational psychology, it measures the subjective value an adolescent assigns to milestone achievements, including high school graduation, post-secondary education matriculation, financial stability, physical well-being, community altruism/volunteerism, and the cultivation of enduring peer networks. Youths who maintain a robust, positively valenced future orientation demonstrate heightened self-regulation and lower susceptibility to risk-taking behaviors, as potential delinquent outcomes pose a direct threat to their internalized life objectives.

2. Global Self-Worth and Self-Esteem (Items 8a–8i)

Adapted from the classical Rosenberg Self-Esteem model, this subscale captures adolescent global self-evaluative appraisal, contrasting feelings of self-satisfaction, inherent capability, and pride against feelings of worthlessness, self-deprecation, and pervasive deficiency. Negative self-concept in youth has long been implicated in internalizing distress (depression, anxiety) as well as compensatory externalizing actions, where aggression or bravado functions as a protective psychic shield against underlying emotional invalidation.

3. Empathic Perspective-Taking and Prosocial Receptivity (Items 9a–9e)

This subscale evaluates the socio-emotional competencies of affective empathy and cognitive perspective-taking. Specific items measure the respondent’s ability to actively listen to peers, recognize the cognitive merits of disliked individuals, experience vicarious affective distress when friends suffer, practice interpersonal trust toward out-group individuals, and retain emotional sensitivity toward non-affiliates. Deficits in perspective-taking are established predictors of reactive aggression, hostile attribution bias, and callous-unemotional traits.

4. Normative Attitudes Toward Guns and Violence (Items 10–29)

Drawing directly from Shapiro et al.’s ATGV paradigm, this major sub-inventory measures the degree to which an adolescent accepts, glorifies, and justifies weapon possession and physical combat. The construct decomposes into three core socio-cognitive schemas:

• Retaliatory Violence and Street Code Defense: The internalized imperative to engage in physical confrontation to defend personal or familial pride, avoid peer-assigned labels of weakness (e.g., being viewed as a “wimp,” “chump,” or “sucker”), and regulate interpersonal grievances through decisive dominance.
• Instrumental Weapon Appraisal: The cognitive belief that possessing or carrying a firearm provides self-protective safety, social standing, respect, personal empowerment, or hedonic thrill (“fun to play around with a real gun”).
• Normative Rejection of Violence (Reverse-Scored Protective Beliefs): The recognition of firearms as inherently lethal hazards, personal discomfort around armed individuals, and an expressed wish for community-wide disarmament.

5. Beliefs About Conflict De-escalation (Items 30–33)

This construct assesses cognitive heuristics regarding the efficacy of various tactical conflict-resolution strategies. It contrasts coercive, weaponized deterrence (threatening or brandishing a weapon to prevent an attack) with non-violent self-regulatory strategies (avoidance, tactical departure, and formal verbal apologies). Youths exhibiting rigid coercive conflict beliefs view weapons as primary tools of survival, whereas youths with advanced social problem-solving competencies identify de-escalation as effective, self-protective conflict avoidance.

6. Substance Use Normativity, Risk Perception, and Self-Regulation (Items 34–47)

Incorporating public health surveillance methodologies, this domain captures three distinct psychological components of substance involvement: normative moral disapprobation (perceived “wrongness” of age-discrepant alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, prescription misuse, and illicit drug use), personal harm risk appraisal (evaluating systemic physical or psychological danger associated with regular use), and internalized abstinence commitments (volitional promissory decisions to avoid alcohol and cannabis), contrasted against empirical 14-day and 30-day prevalence consumption data.

7. Gang Affiliation, Social Capital, and Collective Dominance (Items 48–57)

This construct quantifies subjective neighborhood gang saturation, cognitive beliefs in gang-mediated protective capital (the perception that gang membership provides safety and empowerment), peer and familial gang involvement, and subjective identity commitment to active gang structures. It measures the degree to which an adolescent views violent peer collectives as an adaptive shield against chronic ecological danger.

8. Procedural Justice and Encounters with Legal Authority (Items 58–60)

Grounded in the criminological framework of procedural justice, this module measures the nature, frequency, and subjective fairness of institutional policing interactions. It assesses whether youth perceive law enforcement personnel as treating them with dignity, respect, and equity, versus viewing them as arbitrary agents of institutional oppression—a critical determinant in whether youth ultimately internalize voluntary legal compliance or adopt oppositional anti-legal orientations.

9. Center-Based Safety Satisfaction and Self-Efficacy (Items 61–64)

This evaluative dimension operationalizes programmatic dosage (tenure and frequency of attendance) and subjective developmental benefit (center-facilitated gains in global self-esteem and positive affective program alignment).

6. Theoretical Framework

The architecture of the Safe Place Fall Youth Survey is deeply anchored in multiple foundational psychological and criminological frameworks that explain developmental psychopathology, urban social ecology, and adolescent risk behavior.

Social Information Processing (SIP) Theory

The cognitive core of the survey, particularly its modules assessing attitudes toward guns, violence, and conflict resolution, is explicitly anchored in the Social Information Processing Model formulated by Kenneth A. Dodge and Nicki R. Crick. According to SIP theory, behavioral responses to environmental cues occur via a sequential, six-step cognitive pathway:

1. Encoding of external and internal social cues;
2. Interpretation and mental representation of cues (e.g., determining intent);
3. Clarification of interactional goals (e.g., relationship maintenance versus status dominance);
4. Response access or construction (retrieving potential actions from memory);
5. Response decision (evaluating response efficacy, moral acceptability, and expected outcomes);
6. Behavioral enactment.

Youth who reside in violence-dense urban centers frequently manifest hostile attribution biases and maintain easily activated, hostile cognitive response repertoires. Items assessing whether an insult mandates physical violence to avoid becoming a “chump” or whether carrying a firearm makes an adolescent feel “powerful” evaluate internalized cognitive schemas stored in long-term memory. When an individual internalizes the belief that non-retaliation equates to psychic emasculation or profound vulnerability, their cognitive response evaluation step instantly filters out de-escalation, rendering reactive physical violence the primary perceived viable behavior.

The “Code of the Street” Perspective

From an ecological criminological standpoint, the survey integrates Elijah Anderson’s sociological framework regarding the Code of the Street. Anderson posits that in economically disadvantaged inner-city neighborhoods marked by systemic disinvestment and deep-seated institutional distrust of law enforcement, an oppositional informal normative system emerges. Within this cultural framework, personal safety, social capital, and respect (“juice”) are governed by a credible threat of retaliatory violence. The survey items directly capture this street-code phenomenology: items tracking the necessity to fight to prove one is not a “wimp,” the requirement to avenge familial insults, and the street-level invalidation of classroom behavioral standards (“If I acted the way teachers think I should out on the street, people would think I was weak and I’d get pushed around”) directly operationalize an adolescent’s negotiation of street codes versus mainstream behavioral expectations.

Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory and Moral Disengagement

Albert Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory underpins the survey’s evaluation of peer modeling, self-efficacy, and moral disengagement. Bandura asserts that human behavior is shaped by triadic reciprocal determinism among cognitive structures, environmental reinforcements, and behavioral patterns. In violent contexts, aggressive actions are sustained through socio-cognitive mechanisms of moral justification, diffusion of responsibility, and dehumanization of rivals. The survey’s ATGV subscale items—such as expecting mutual respect but promising catastrophic retaliation if thwarted (“they’ll pay for it bad”)—reflect cognitive rationalizations that legitimize aggressive conduct, bypassing normal self-regulatory moral sanctions.

Problem Behavior Theory and the Social Development Strategy

The holistic configuration of the battery is aligned with Richard Jessor’s Problem Behavior Theory and David Hawkins and Richard Catalano’s Social Development Strategy. Jessor posited that adolescent problem behaviors (illicit drug usage, weapon possession, school failure, aggression) do not occur in structural vacuums; rather, they form an interconnected syndrome driven by overarching psychosocial systems: the Personality System (personal values, self-worth, alienation), the Perceived Environment System (peer models of deviance versus family/school support), and the Behavior System. The Safe Place Fall Youth Survey assesses these simultaneous systems by pairing personal value metrics (aspirations, self-worth) with peer contextual variables (school peer gang membership, family gang heritage) and specific behavioral metrics (past 30-day marijuana use, police contact). By measuring both risk markers and positive developmental assets (prosocial bonds, afterschool center satisfaction), the survey models the protective pathways that buffer youth against chronic ecological risks.

7. Validity

The validity of the Safe Place Fall Youth Survey is substantiated through psychometric field trials, comparative analysis with national benchmark assessments, and construct validation of its embedded standardized subscales.

Construct and Structural Validity

Construct validity across the survey modules is reinforced by strong theoretical consistency and predictable latent variable interrelations. During the primary psychometric validation of the embedded Attitudes Toward Guns and Violence Scale (ATGV; Shapiro et al.), confirmatory factor analyses verified that adolescent scores reliably differentiate along expected clinical and behavioral fault lines. Adolescents exhibiting elevated scores on the ATGV aggressive subscales demonstrate statistically significant positive correlations with teacher-rated externalizing behavior problems, juvenile justice adjudications, self-reported weapon-carrying frequencies, and school suspension rates (convergent coefficients ranging from r = .44 to r = .68, p < .001). Conversely, the ATGV protective/anti-violence subscales correlate negatively with conduct disorder symptom inventories and positively with standardized measures of socio-moral reasoning and behavioral self-control.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity

Convergent validity is observed between the survey’s SEL empathic perspective-taking module and social competence metrics. Youth reporting elevated empathic sensitivity (Item 9e) and listening skills (Item 9a) show significant negative associations with reactive violence approval (Item 10; r = -.38, p < .01) and street-code retaliation adherence (Item 21; r = -.41, p < .01). Furthermore, the gang affinity items (Items 49–57) manifest robust convergent alignment with police contact severity (Items 58–59); respondents endorsing active gang membership or high gang protection utility are significantly more likely to report punitive police encounters, including searches and custodial arrests (odds ratios exceeding 3.2, p < .001).

Discriminant validity is supported by the distinct performance profiles observed between general self-worth metrics (Items 8a–8i) and tactical conflict-de-escalation appraisals (Items 30–33). Global self-esteem does not automatically translate into non-violent problem solving; self-esteem scores maintain negligible-to-weak correlations with weapon utility beliefs (r = .06 to .12, non-significant), proving that self-worth is an empirically independent construct from cognitive endorsements of physical combat. This divergence prevents the conflation of positive general self-concept with prosocial de-escalation mastery.

Criterion and Predictive Validity

Predictive validity is demonstrated across programmatic longitudinal evaluations. Urban youth completing baseline assessments in the fall who score in the upper quartile of weapon glorification (Items 13, 15, 17) and retaliatory aggression (Items 11, 14, 22) exhibit an elevated probability of subsequent involvement in disciplinary school infractions, juvenile arrests, and physical fights over the ensuing 6 to 12 months. Concurrently, high baseline endorsement of future educational aspirations (Items 7a, 7b) and positive center-based engagement (Items 63, 64) longitudinally predict lower substance experimentation and sustained school retention across multi-year cohort tracking.

8. Reliability

The reliability indices for the primary subscales embedded within the Safe Place Fall Youth Survey demonstrate solid psychometric consistency across urban adolescent samples ranging in age from 10 to 18 years.

Internal Consistency

Extensive field evaluations across community-based youth cohorts establish robust Cronbach’s alpha (α) coefficients across the primary evaluative modules:

• Attitudes Toward Guns and Violence (ATGV) Composite (Items 10–29): The full 20-item module yields an overall internal consistency coefficient ranging between α = .84 and α = .89. When broken down into its primary latent dimensions, the Retaliatory Violence / Street Code subscale yields an alpha of .82–.86, while the Aggressive Gun Attraction subscale yields an alpha of .81–.85. The 4-item reverse-scored Anti-Gun / Non-Violence Norms subscale yields a moderately lower, yet acceptable, alpha of α = .72–.76, typical for brief reverse-worded adolescent subscales.
• Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Modules: The Global Self-Worth inventory (Items 8a–8i) exhibits an internal consistency coefficient of α = .81. The Empathic Perspective-Taking subscale (Items 9a–9e) demonstrates an alpha of α = .74. The Future Aspirations scale (Items 7a–7f) achieves an alpha of α = .79.
• Beliefs About Conflict Resolution (Items 30–33): This brief 4-item screening scale yields an internal consistency metric of α = .71. Given the brevity of the subscale, this coefficient demonstrates satisfactory domain sampling for screening purposes.
• Gang Participation and Ideation Subscale (Items 49–57): Across its dichotomous (True for me / Not true for me) response architecture, the Kuder-Richardson Formula 20 (KR-20) reliability coefficient spans .78 to .83, confirming cohesive item alignment around the gang risk construct.

Test-Retest Stability

Test-retest stability has been demonstrated across longitudinal control cohorts evaluated over 4-to-6-week test-retest windows in non-intervened school settings. The ATGV subscales demonstrate intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) ranging between .76 and .83, indicating that underlying socio-cognitive beliefs regarding weapon utility and violent retaliation remain reasonably stable in the absence of explicit programmatic cognitive-behavioral intervention. The substance use perception and self-esteem measures similarly demonstrate robust temporal stability (ICC = .79 and .82, respectively).

9. Factor Analysis

The structural dimensionality of the Safe Place Fall Youth Survey has been analyzed via both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) across diverse urban youth validation samples.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

Initial structural examinations using Principal Axis Factoring with Promax oblique rotation across the 20-item Attitudes Toward Guns and Violence module yielded a robust three-factor solution, accounting for approximately 52.4% of the total variance:

• Factor 1: Provocation and Retaliatory Violence (Street-Code Alignment): Subsumes items such as 10, 11, 14, 18, 21, 22, 24, and 26. Primary factor loadings range from .54 to .76. This factor represents the cognitive rationalization that interpersonal insults and slights mandate violent retribution to avoid reputational damage.
• Factor 2: Weapon Utility, Thrill, and Social Power: Subsumes items such as 12, 13, 15, 17, 20, 25, and 29. Factor loadings span .49 to .73. This dimension captures the cognitive appraisal of firearms and gang structures as sources of personal invulnerability, status, and hedonic excitement.
• Factor 3: Aversion to Firearms and Weapon Danger: Subsumes items 16, 19, 23, 27, and 28. Factor loadings range from .48 to .71 (loading negatively onto the primary aggression continuum). This factor isolates protective moral revulsion toward weapon ownership and firearms proliferation.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

Subsequent Confirmatory Factor Analysis performed on urban youth populations substantiated the multidimensional construct architecture of the core sub-inventories. Structural equation models evaluating the 3-factor ATGV structure exhibited satisfactory goodness-of-fit indices:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI) = .941
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) = .933
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) = .048 (90% CI [.041, .055])
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR) = .051

Alternative single-factor models (collapsing all ATGV items into a single generalized aggression dimension) exhibited substantially worse fit (CFI = .782, RMSEA = .094), verifying that adolescent attitudes toward firearms represent nuanced, multidimensional cognitive structures rather than a simple unidimensional preference.

Similarly, CFA testing of the Social and Emotional Learning inventory verified a bifurcated latent structure distinguishing Global Self-Worth (Items 8a–8i; factor loadings ranging from .42 to .74) from Empathic Responsiveness (Items 9a–9e; factor loadings ranging from .46 to .69), with acceptable model parameters (CFI = .938, RMSEA = .052). These empirical fit metrics validate the structural segmentation of the survey into discrete, clinically interpretable subscales.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Safe Place Fall Youth Survey is a standardized, multidimensional self-report assessment protocol. Below is the operational specification of the instrument:

• Instrument Designation: Safe Place Fall Youth Survey
• Target Population: Urban children and adolescents (predominantly grades 5 through 12, approximate age range 10–18 years).
• Administration Format: Paper-and-pencil self-completion or supervised digital assessment (administered in small-group settings within afterschool youth centers, community hubs, or educational environments).
• Total Item Count: 64 numbered items (incorporating multi-part items, behavioral checklists, and subscale item batteries).
• Administration Duration: Approximately 25 to 40 minutes, depending on the reading comprehension and developmental age of the youth.
• Instructional Set: Standardized, non-punitive, confidentiality-guaranteed instructions informing participants that answers remain private and that items may be skipped if the respondent does not wish to provide an answer.
• Modular Architecture and Specific Response Formats:
  • Module 1: About You (Items 1–6): Categorical sociodemographic intake: Age (Item 1), Biological Sex (Item 2), Grade Level (Item 3), Racial Heritage (Item 4), Hispanic/Latino Ethnicity (Item 5), and Sexual Orientation (Item 6).
  • Module 2: Social and Emotional Learning (Items 7–9):
    • Item 7 (Future Aspirations, 6 items): 4-point importance scale (Very important [4], Important [3], Somewhat important [2], Not at all important [1]).
    • Item 8 (Self-Worth Statements, 9 items): 4-point agreement scale (Strongly agree [4], Agree [3], Disagree [2], Strongly disagree [1]), with negative items reverse-coded.
    • Item 9 (Empathy and Active Listening, 5 items): 5-point frequency scale (Never [1], Seldom [2], Sometimes [3], Often [4], Always [5]).
  • Module 3: Attitudes Toward Guns and Violence (Items 10–29): 20 items evaluated on a 3-point categorical scale (Agree [3], Not Sure [2], Disagree [1]). Aggressive and weapon-utility items are scored positively (higher values indicate greater aggression), while protective anti-gun items (16, 19, 23, 27, 28) are reverse-scored.
  • Module 4: Beliefs About Conflict (Items 30–33): 4 items evaluated on a 4-point efficacy/frequency scale (Never [1], Sometimes [2], Always [3], Not sure [coded separately or as baseline median]).
  • Module 5 & 6: Substance Norms, Perceptions, and Behavioral Prevalence (Items 34–47):
    • Moral Disapproval (Items 34–37, 39, 41): 4-point wrongness scale (Very Wrong [4], Wrong [3], A little bit wrong [2], Not wrong at all [1]).
    • Harm Risk Appraisals (Items 38, 43): 4-point risk scale (No risk [1], Slight risk [2], Moderate risk [3], Great risk [4]).
    • Behavioral Prevalence Recalls (Items 40, 42, 45, 47): Discrete frequency bins (e.g., past 2 weeks binge drinking: None to 10 or more times; past 30 days marijuana: 0 times to 40 or more times).
    • Abstinence Intentions (Items 44, 46): 4-point agreement scale (Strongly agree [4], Agree [3], Disagree [2], Strongly disagree [1]).
  • Module 7: Gang Participation and Risk Beliefs (Items 48–57): Item 48 utilizes a 3-point seriousness rating (Very serious, Somewhat serious, Not serious). Items 49–57 utilize a dichotomous format (Not true for me [0], True for me [1]).
  • Module 8: Police Contact and Procedural Respect (Items 58–60): Items 58 and 59 present multi-choice behavioral checklists for 30-day and 12-month police interaction reasons (e.g., stopped/questioned, warned, reported crime, assistance, arrested, searched). Item 60 measures perceived respect via a 4-point frequency scale (Always [4], Most of the time [3], Some of the time [2], Never [1], plus non-contact bypass option).
  • Module 9: Youth Satisfaction Survey (Items 61–64): Center attendance tenure (Item 61) and frequency (Item 62), followed by two programmatic evaluative statements (Items 63, 64) rated on a 5-point agreement scale (Strongly Agree [5], Somewhat Agree [4], Somewhat Disagree [3], Disagree [2], Strongly Disagree [1]).
• Scoring and Interpretation Procedures: Subscale indices are generated by computing the mean or sum of constituent items following the inversion of reverse-coded indicators. Modules are preserved as separate subscale scores rather than merged into a single total score, generating an ecological profile of youth psychosocial functioning.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Safe Place Fall Youth Survey was compiled and placed into programmatic field evaluation in its current standardized form in 2013 by Safe & Sound, Inc. (Milwaukee, WI). As a specialized program evaluation instrument developed through non-profit community crime-prevention initiatives, the composite survey itself is not commercially marketed or sold for profit. The original evaluation instrument was made accessible for community youth centers and programmatic researchers through organizational publications and institutional repositories (Safe & Sound Archive).

Researchers and clinical evaluators seeking to adapt, reproduce, or deploy the complete battery or its constituent scales must observe specific intellectual property considerations:

• Attitudes Toward Guns and Violence Scale (ATGV): The underlying 20-item ATGV module is copyrighted by its original developers (Jeremy P. Shapiro et al., Center for Cognitive Therapy and Research / The Guidance Center, Cleveland, OH). While freely accessible for academic, institutional, and non-profit evaluation studies via standard scholarly citations, commercial use or automated testing distribution requires authorization from the copyright holders.
• Public Domain and Surveillance Inclusions: The substance use surveillance metrics (Items 34–47) and general demographic items derive from public domain instruments maintained by the federal government, specifically the CDC Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Monitoring the Future study, which reside freely in the public domain for non-commercial scientific research.
• Institutional Program Scale: The composite arrangement, community policing modules, and Safe Place satisfaction items remain intellectual property of Safe & Sound, Inc., available for non-commercial youth-serving programmatic adaptation with attribution.

12. References

Below are primary academic and empirical references documenting the foundational theories, psychometric properties, and measurement standards underlying the Safe Place Fall Youth Survey:

• Anderson, E. (1999). Code of the street: Decency, violence, and the moral life of the inner city. W. W. Norton & Company.
• Bandura, A. (1991). Social cognitive theory of moral thought and action. In W. M. Kurtines & J. L. Gewirtz (Eds.), Handbook of moral behavior and development (Vol. 1, pp. 45–103). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2013). Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System: 2013 national overview. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), 63(SS04), 1–168. https://www.cdc.gov/healthy-youth/data/yrbs/index.html
• Crick, N. R., & Dodge, K. A. (1994). A review and reformulation of social information-processing mechanisms in children’s social adjustment. Psychological Bulletin, 115(1), 74–101. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.115.1.74
• Hawkins, J. D., Catalano, R. F., & Miller, J. Y. (1992). Risk and protective factors for alcohol and other drug problems in adolescence and early adulthood: Implications for substance abuse prevention. Psychological Bulletin, 112(1), 64–105. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.112.1.64
• Jessor, R. (1991). Risk behavior in adolescence: A psychosocial framework for understanding and action. Journal of Adolescent Health, 12(8), 597–605. https://doi.org/10.1016/1054-139X(91)90007-K
• Johnston, L. D., O’Malley, P. M., Bachman, J. G., & Schulenberg, J. E. (2013). Monitoring the Future national results on drug use: 2012 overview, key findings on adolescent drug use. Institute for Social Research, The University of Michigan. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED544421
• Rosenberg, M. (1965). Society and the adolescent self-image. Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400876136
• Safe & Sound, Inc. (2013). Safe Place Fall Youth Survey 2013. Milwaukee Safe & Sound Evaluation Archive. http://www.safesound.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/2013-Safe-Place-Fall-Youth-Survey.pdf
• Shapiro, J. P., Dorman, R. L., Burkey, W. M., Welker, C. J., & Clough, J. B. (1997). Development and factor analysis of a measure of youth attitudes toward guns and violence. Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, 26(3), 311–320. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15374424jccp2603_10
• Shapiro, J. P., Dorman, R. L., Welker, C. J., & Clough, J. B. (1998). Youth attitudes toward guns and violence: Relations with sex, age, ethnic group, and exposure to violence. Violence and Victims, 13(1), 3–16. https://doi.org/10.1891/0886-6708.13.1.3
• Tyler, T. R. (2006). Why people obey the law. Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400828609

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)