An investigation of the perceptions of students, teachers, and parents concerning school safety within the elementary schools of a large suburban school district

This dissertation research study was designed to describe and critically examine how a large sample of elementary school students (n = 3,843), teachers (n = 531), and parents (n = 271) perceive school environments with respect to safety. Three research questions were addressed. Are there relationships between the perceptions of safety scores and the participant types? Are there relationships between the perceptions of safety scores and the individual difference characteristic categories of the participants? Are there relationships between the perceptions of safety scores and a set of school cluster characteristics?; Data sets for this study were obtained from three different sources: (1) an archival needs assessment survey; (2) the survey responses from all school psychologists in the district targeted for study; and (3) the findings related to three focus group activities. The qualitative data sets were described and analyzed using a grounded theoretical approach.; The most significant relationship was found between perceptions of safety and participant types. Students perceived their school environment less positively than both staff and parents. Fifth and sixth graders perceived themselves to be less safe than fourth graders. An analysis of the data indicated that participants attending schools with a large percentage of minority students tend to perceive the school environment as less safe than participants attending schools with fewer minority students. Findings from the study also indicated that participants from larger schools have a more positive view of school safety than participants from smaller schools. Participants from those schools housing self-contained special education classrooms have more positive perceptions of safety than participants from schools without self-contained special education classrooms. The findings did not provide support for the view that there is a strong relationship between character education program offerings and positive perceptions of safety. Findings also indicate that there may be an inverse relationship between peer mediation program offerings and perceptions of safety. Overall, the pattern of findings indicate that student-adult relationships are perceived to be the weakest link to positive perceptions of the school environment.