Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #114854

Mary Vriniotis, MS and Deborah Azrael, PhD. Harvard Injury Control Research Center, Harvard School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue, Kresge 314B, Boston, MA 02115, 617-432-4892, mvriniot@hsph.harvard.edu

Assuring all schools provide safe, secure environments for youth development and learning is a key goal of educators and public health professionals nationwide. Nonetheless, many U.S. children feel unsafe: 6% of high-school students report they fear being attacked either on the way to or at school. We examined perceptions and correlates of school safety using results from the 2004 Boston Youth Survey, a random sample of public high school students living in impoverished neighborhoods in Boston (n=951). Twenty-one percent indicated they do not feel safe at school. Multivariate logistic regressions indicate feeling unsafe at school is associated with: male gender (23% males v. 18% females, OR=1.78), being born outside the U.S. (27% v. 18%, OR=1.35), gang activity at school (30% v. 11%, OR=2.05), trouble getting along with peers (27% v. 15%, OR=1.21), feeling very sad (31% v. 19%, OR=1.32), believing most people try to take advantage of you (25% v. 16%, OR=1.56), and lack of trust in teachers (25% v. 15%, OR=1.53). While students who witnessed violence at school were more likely to feel unsafe there (26% v. 15%, OR=1.31), those who had personally been victimized at school were not. There was no association between perceptions of school safety and age, race, grades, truancy, educational goals, positive interactions with peers, participation in after-school activities, or gun accessibility. Our findings are consistent with previous research indicating that fear and actual victimization are not necessarily collinear, and that there are health implications of fear beyond the actual risk of physical harm.

Learning Objectives: Session participants will be able to

• List correlates of feeling unsafe at school
• Identify and discuss possible relationships between school safety and these correlates (e.g. do they predict feeling unsafe at school or are they outcomes of feeling unsafe at school?)
• Develop potential evidence-based strategies for intervention

Keywords: Adolescent Health, Safety

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.