Keywords

Scale development; Content validation; School safety; Law enforcement; Guardians; Student perception

Abstract

There is "no one-size-fits-all solution" to school safety (Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, 2022. p. 7). The growing number of school shootings and health problems at schools raise serious questions about the dimensions of school safety that should be measured. Prior extensive surveys measuring elementary student's views of safety in relation to relevant safety issues have not been conducted. There were four objectives for this study: 1) to investigate relevant dimensions of school safety and understand safety procedures that are currently in use; 2) to formulate and organize questions that would be approved to gauge elementary students' perceptions about school safety; 3) to assess validity and reliability of expert's perceived school safety relevancy scores of the SPSS Scale's items and theoretical dimensions of school safety; and 4) to determine whether school guardians and law enforcement share the same concerns about school safety. A preliminary analysis using Q-Method was run which led to approximately 27% reduction of items; differences in officer and teacher ratings were found. The primary task called for law enforcement and school guardians' expert judgement on relevancy and suitability of the SPSS Scale. A series of tests were performed to examine the scores to assess the validity and reliability of the safety expert's ratings. A Kruskal-Wallis H test was used to evaluate target hardening to ascertain whether the safety experts have similar concerns regarding school safety. Findings concluded that there were no statistically significant differences among the experts' ratings of the items; they share the same view. Strong reliability was shown in the close correlation between the expert's judgments of the scale items and the theoretical constructs of school safety. The SPSS Scale's applicability to comprehensively evaluate school safety was raised by agreement over themes discovered on the relevant but unreported school safety issues.

Completion Date

2024

Semester

Spring

Committee Chair

Sivo, Stephen

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

College

College of Community Innovation and Education

Department

Learning Sciences & Educational Research

Degree Program

Methodology, Measurement, and Analysis

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

DP0028387

URL

https://purls.library.ucf.edu/go/DP0028387

Language

English

Rights

In copyright

Release Date

May 2024

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Doctoral Dissertation (Open Access)

Campus Location

Orlando (Main) Campus

Accessibility Status

Meets minimum standards for ETDs/HUTs

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