| In the United States, educators have the fourth highest non-fatal violent victimization rate in the workplace. Educators working in schools commonly experience non-fatal, student-perpetrated school violence as work-related physical assault (PA). These educators often also work in school environments which lack sufficient school resources. To investigate the relation between disparities in school resource levels, school resource allocations, and risk of PA, a case-control study was conducted from the Minnesota Educators' Study (MES). The MES examined a randomly selected cohort of state-licensed Kindergarten through grade 12 employed educators. From mailed questionnaires, response rates for both Phase I (comprehensive study on violent events and consequences) and Phase II (case-control study of risk for PA) 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, available school-level fiscal and demographic data from the Minnesota Department of Education were combined with MES questionnaire data, such that analyses were conducted on 238 cases and 640 controls. Multivariate analyses using directed acyclic graphs to guide selection of confounders, suggested that increased spending was associated with decreased risk of PA (OR=0.82, 95% CI: 0.41, 1.62), although not statistically important. In considering the allocation of school resources (i.e., expenditures) to specific areas, an allocation greater than 5%, versus less than 0.04% of the total annual per student education expenditure to student activities programming, was associated with a decreased risk of PA (OR=0.30, 95% CI: 0.12, 0.77). Multivariate analyses also suggested that educators who reported that they lacked resources for their students experienced increased risk of PA. Insufficient access to several specific types of resources was also associated with increased risk of PA. Results suggested a relation between lack of access to school resources and PA; particularly notable, in this population, were the increased risks of PA with insufficient access to specific school resources, such as sports and extracurricular activities. 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 development of relevant prevention strategies. |
