School Resources, Resource Allocation, and Risk of Physical Assault Against Minnesota Educators

Details

• Personal Author:
  Alexander BH ; Church, Timothy R. ; Gerberich, Susan G. ; Mongin, Steven J. ; Nachreiner, Nancy M. ; Ryan, Andrew D. ; Sage SK
• Description:
  To investigate the relation between schools' resource levels (i.e., annual per student expenditures), school resource allocations, and physical assault (PA) against Minnesota's educators, a study was conducted from the two-phase Minnesota Educators' Study (MES) that incorporated school-level fiscal and demographic data from the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE). The MES examined a randomly selected cohort of employed, state-licensed kindergarten through grade 12 educators. From mailed questionnaires, response rates for both Phase I (comprehensive data collection on violent events) and Phase II (case-control) were 84%. Cases experienced a work-related PA event in the previous 12 months; controls reported no assaults. Based on the school in which they worked the most time and available MDE school-level data, together with MES questionnaire data, analyses were conducted on 238 cases and 640 controls. Multivariate analyses, using directed acyclic graphs to guide selection of confounders, suggested that increased spending (i.e. resources) was associated with decreased risk of PA. Analyses further suggested that the highest quartiles of resource allocations, compared with the lowest quartiles (referents), were associated with decreased risks of PA for: district level administration; regular instruction; special education; student activities and athletics; and pupil support services expenditures. Associations between increased resource allocations to student activities expenditures and decreased risks of PA were the strongest. For example, an allocation greater than 5% of the total annual per student expenditure to student activities programming (referent, less than 0.04%) was associated with a decreased risk of PA (OR=0.30, 95% CI: 0.12, 0.77). Results suggested that allocations of school resources (i.e., expenditures) to key program areas such as student athletics and extracurricular activities may reduce risk of work-related PA against educators. Research to further explore the nature of the relations between disparities in school resources and spending, resource allocations, and PA will be important to the continued development of relevant prevention strategies. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Age Factors Behavior Demography Epidemiology Family Occupational Health Safety Safety Management Surveys And Questionnaires Workplace
• Keywords:
  Age-factors Author Keywords: Occupational Violence Children Demographic-characteristics Educators Families Physical Assault Questionnaires Safety-education Safety-measures Safety-practices Safety-research Sociological-factors Statistical-analysis Work-environment Work-related Injury Workplace-studies

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• ISSN:
  0001-4575
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Grant
• Genre:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  Minnesota ; OSHA Region 5
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  1-9
• Volume:
  42
• Issue:
  1
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20036071
• Citation:
  Accid Anal Prev 2010 Jan; 42(1):1-9
• Contact Point Address:
  Starr K. Sage, Regional Injury Prevention Research Center and Center for Violence Prevention and Control, Division of Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455
• Email:
  sage0005@umn.edu
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2010
• Performing Organization:
  University of Minnesota - Twin Cities
• Peer Reviewed:
  True
• Start Date:
  20040501
• Source Full Name:
  Accident Analysis and Prevention
• End Date:
  20080430
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:41d5693ba24f6eef9cdff763ae3c441ddd95581cf3d6cbecdde2facdef0ded7c5661eb794d577fced93cc1951e0ae7c2dfd5363de1caf44eec2004911ea61d63
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/187665/cdc_187665_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 175.28 KB ]