Review 1 of "Perceptions of School Resource Officer Roles in Exemplar Programs in Virginia"

Vote: Publish pending minor changes

[For votes to count, referees must reasonably explain why they voted as they did. Thus, please explain your vote. If you voted to publish pending minor changes, specify each change, why it is needed, and, possibly, how it should/could be done.]

The paper is very well written, but it needs a little editing (e.g., using semicolons in place of commas).

It is unclear what qualifies a SRO program as exemplar and how the relevant criteria are assessed. Based on the limited information provided under data collection, this seems like a largely subjective assessment and therefore is subject to bias. It would be helpful for the authors to parse out how this metric was determined.

The mix of individual and joint interviews is problematic because joint interviews are subject to peer effects. At the very least, it needs to be acknowledged as a limitation.

Why were different interview guides created? How were they similar? How did they differ?

Including a measure of intercoder reliability (e.g., Kappa coefficient, which NVivo will calculate for you) would be helpful to better support any analytic findings.

It would be helpful to provide basic descriptive statistics in-text for each theme. For instance, how many of the participants (either aggregated and/or based on their respective roles) agreed that SROs support a safe and secure learning environment?

There is a typo in the start of the quote for SRO Supervisor Adam under the heading “Supporter of School Discipline.”

Avoiding close-ended questions is actually a strength of the study, not a limitation.

Why use discrete coding if statements could fit into more than one theme? It seems as though potential nuance(s) of the findings are being lost.

[Please put additional info below, as/if you see fit.]

This paper is a unique take on traditional research on SROs. The authors do a good job of tying their findings back to the broader body of literature. If the issues raised above were to be corrected, it would be even stronger / more rigorous.