Resource Selection Process

As a direct result of the school and university violence that has occurred on campuses throughout the United States, volumes of important information has been produced. Over the past decade the federal government and many private organizations have been responsible for conducting research, developing training, and producing hundreds of innovative and important informational documents and programs for primary, secondary schools, and post secondary colleges and universities. Many of these products have positively contributed to the knowledge, understanding, and implementation of school violence mitigation, prevention, response, and recovery throughout the nation.

Because of the vast breadth and scope of materials that have been produced, researchers for the Schools and Universities Safety Resource Center (SUSRC) were cognizant of the necessity to develop an appropriate materials selection process and a specific sub-category of materials selection criteria. This process had to be fair and objective as well as take into consideration the specific objectives of this project and finite funding of this grant.

In order to appropriately select materials to be included in the SUSRC, project researchers first developed a three-stage materials selection process. This comprehensive process included a universal search, a preliminary selection stage, and a final selection component.

In the universal search, researchers poured over a wide variety of materials that had been produced or developed by public or private agencies. Thousands of documents, publications, CD-ROMS, trainings, forms, tools and templates were reviewed and categorized.

In the preliminary selection stage, researchers applied the selection criteria listed below to reduce the number of possible adaptation materials into a manageable number.

In the final selection stage, the remaining materials were intensively reviewed according to the established selection criteria, and all selections were agreed upon by a consensus of the research team.

Selection Criteria

In order for researchers to appropriately select materials to be included in the SUSRC, specific project criteria were established. The criteria included the materials selections guidelines. These guidelines were developed to assist researchers in initially culling out the majority of possible materials reviewed during the universal search, and then selecting materials during the preliminary and final selection stages.

The five criteria areas were: applicable to a large number of educational institutions, ease of implementation and use, established and successful track record, cost, and innovativeness. In addition, all state governors were contacted to recommend state resources that met the criteria for this website.

• Applicable to a large number of educational institutions

  • Because the Schools and Universities Safety Resource Center project is national in scope, the selected materials had to apply to a significant number of primary, secondary, and post-secondary educational institutions. Although certain materials may have been useful to some specific sub-groupings (demographic or geographic), overall the materials had to demonstrate wide-spread application.

• Ease of implementation and use

  • All selected materials, products, services, and trainings must be easy to use and/or implement for school districts, colleges or universities. Checklists, existing procedures or protocols, pre-designed templates or other standardized items may meet this criteria.

• Established and successful track record

  • All items selected must have an established and proven rack record but not limited to federally approved pilot site testing or actual field implementation.

• Cost

  • Cost includes all applicable costs associated with the use of the products, services or materials. Special consideration was given to materials that had no cost to the end user.

• Innovativeness

  • Many of the items reviewed may no longer be applicable to today's campus environment. Products, services, and materials that demonstrated an innovative approach to campus safety and security were given special consideration.

State-specific resources were requested from each state and have been included on the state resources page. State resources were not vetted using the selection criteria shown above but are included for informational purposes.

All resources (except state resources) in this website were developed by federal agencies or by nonprofit organizations. Anyone who believes that a resource should be included that does meet these criteria, please contact us for consideration of placing the resource in this website.