An Examination of the Role of Perpetrator’s Relationship to Overall School Shooting Casualties

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article submitted for review is well written, in an interesting and logical way, and also addresses the important issue of school shooting casualties conditions.

The statement: “further, coupled with the knowledge that scant literature has investigated the perpetrators relationship with the severity of school shooting incidents, the current study aims to address this gap in the extant literature. Therefore, the current study attempts to explore the characteristics of school shootings and examine the perpetrators relationship with the total number of victims” (lines 107-111) is very interesting, true and relevant – in an attempt to solve it in a scientific article. The result of scientific considerations in the form of a reviewed article is very successful.

I highly appreciate the incorporation into existing literature on this subject and the logic of the research procedures carried out. I personally also use other statistical techniques (e.g. GRM, ANCOVA or step-by-step regression). However, it can be a question of controversy and debatable.

I also wonder whether more important independent variables could be used in this research: those concerning the educational institutions themselves (number of students, the range of the school's impact - housing estate, local, regional, etc.), or spatial characteristics (size of the city where the school is located, state, crime rate in the vicinity of the school or the place of residence of the perpetrator). This can be treated as a suggestion for future research.

I do not appreciate the quality of the presented drawings. They are unsuccessful and boring. There are many types of charts that would significantly improve the quality of data visualisation –  which would appeal more to the reader's imagination. You can also include more interesting information in the tables. The ones posted here are very basic. And two more remarks: - tables should have their titles, - Fig. 2 lacks a description of the first category.

In conclusion, I agree with the last sentence of the manuscript: "In closing, the current study provides valuable information that may be useful for social scientists, policy-makers, and practitioners" (375-376) - the study submitted for review is a valuable scientific work that should be published. Good job.

Author Response

Comments attached 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The article deals with a current and important topic.

The article has a good literature review and empirical research, even though the cases were taken from a secondary source.

I suggest minor adjustments for publication:

1) In the abstract, the author must also inform the methodology.

2) In the introduction, the objective of the research must be clearly explained. The purpose is specified only in the “Discussion” item.

3) The article must make clear the methodology used (literature review, documentary research with secondary data analysis, taken from existing databases).

4) In the text (lines 325 to 336), when it addresses Restorative Justice, it is very superficial, it is not very clear how it can contribute to mitigating the problem of school shooting.

5) In the item “Limitations, Future Research and Conclusion”, the conclusions of the research are not clear. It needs to develop a little more. The author could also link the empirical research and the theoretical approach more closely.

6) There are formatting issues in the References item.

The quality of English is good. The article needs minor revision.

Author Response

Comments attached

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Among the takeaways from this paper are at least two that could be useful to policymakers and practitioners:  the special vulnerabilities of elementary school students, and the idea about using restorative justice practices to improve school climates.  Unfortunately, given that the writing sticks so closely to the statistics, without for example offering cases or examples or other forms of elaboration, it comes off as being quite dense reading.  Thus, I am not sure how many of those who could actually implement the paper's recommendations would be willing to read it?

The paper requires a close proofreading.

Author Response

Thank you for your feedback