Violence Against Teachers: Etiology & Consequences

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DESCRIPTION: Within the realm of violence, work-related violence has been recognized as a major problem. While there is an emerging literature pertinent to work-related homicides, there is a serious deficiency in the knowledge of non-fatal work-related violence and the associated risk factors. Violence is defined as the intentional use of physical force or emotional abuse, against an employee, that results in physical assault and/or non-physical violence (threat, sexual harassment, and verbal abuse). The primary aims of this effort are 1) to determine the magnitude and consequences of physical and non-physical violence within a major population of elementary and secondary teachers and 2) to identify relevant risk factors for physical assault, using a case-control design, by examining the relations between work-related assault and a) teacher personal characteristics/exposures: including job type, student contact hours, hours worked, work experience, education, specialty training, illness/injury history including prior violence experience, and demographics (age, gender, race, marital status, socioeconomic status); b) characteristics of others in the environment (co-workers, students): including numbers and types, history of violent behaviors, other relevant behaviors, and demographics (age, gender, race, etc.); c) environmental situations/exposures: such as types of facilities/schools and relevant community socioeconomic status, location, physical design/attributes (openness, lighting, barriers, room configurations); administrative and management factors including tolerance of violence/relevant policies and protocols, support for employees, employee assistance/resources, student support/resources, and security measures. Initially, a survey instrument will be sent to a randomly selected cohort of 12,600 licensed teachers to identify those who worked in the state of Minnesota during the pas 12-months and their experience of work-related violence. Analyses of data collected from this instrument will be used 1) to determine the rates and consequences of physical assault and non-physical violence and 2) to study the potential associations, between each form of violence and several teacher-related and environmental characteristics. Subsequently, a nested case-control design will be used to examine the relation between various exposures of interest and work-related physical assault. Cases will be defined as those who report at least one physical assault while controls (3:1) will be those who report no physical assault during the 12-month study period. A questionnaire will then be sent to the cases and selected controls to obtain data on work environment exposures including the characteristics of persons in the workplace and surrounding environmental factors. Cases will be questioned about their exposures prior to and during the incident. Controls will be questioned about their exposures on a randomly selected time from the study period. Validity relevant to selection bias and information bias will be evaluated through substudies. This study design will enable calculation of rate ratios for the effect of exposures of interest on the rate of physical assault. From this effort, specific prevention and control strategies can be developed more realistically.