Nashville Longitudinal Study of Youth Safety and Wellbeing, Tennessee, 2009-2022

The Nashville Longitudinal Study of Youth Safety and Wellbeing (NLSYSW) was created to provide multi-level, multi-sector, longitudinal data on key ecological and developmental factors that impact youth violence and school safety. The data collected for this study include longitudinal survey and administrative data on disciplinary referrals and sanctions, social emotional competencies, school climate, community violence exposure, and attitudes toward violence from students in grades kindergarten through 12 in the Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) school district. In addition, this collection includes measures of several ecological influences, including school environment (e.g., programs/interventions offered, climate, and school safety) and neighborhood context (e.g., neighborhood economic structure, assets and resources, crime, gun violence, and housing) that can be linked to student data via neighborhood. The data provided spans the period of 2009 through 2022, with most intense coverage of 2018 through 2021.
These data have been utilized by an interdisciplinary team of researchers, educators, city government officials, police, juvenile courts, and youth development workers to support school and community initiatives related to understanding a) the role of neighborhood exposure to violence and disadvantage on students' norms/attitudes, behaviors, and achievement, b) the role of school climate and access to resources in moderating neighborhood and student risk factors, c) the neighborhood, school, and individual factors that influence students' social and emotional competence, and d) the neighborhood, school, and student factors that affect racial/ethnic disparities in office disciplinary referrals and the use of exclusionary discipline.
Demographic information at the student-level includes grade, gender, and race/ethnicity. At the school building-level,
White, Black, and Hispanic staff percentages are provided.