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Abstract

The study focuses on explaining differences in violent behavior among 203 15- and 16-year-old German students from four schools of the highest and four of the lowest educational track. In open-ended interviews, violent behavior, pacifistic attitudes, quality of family experience, and stressful experiences (e.g., job worries, social isolation, family break-up) were assessed. Although, overall students of the lower track schools (especially males) displayed more violence, the large differences between individual schools were more striking. Of the individual characteristics, stressful experiences made no contribution to explaining violence and quality of family experience only a weak one. The context variable of “pacifistic school climate” (operationalized as percentage of pacifistic students) was the most influential and strongly moderated the impact of family experiences. The findings suggest that interventions in schools may help to reduce violence.