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Potential school violence: Relationship between teacher anxiety and warning‐sign identification
Author(s) -
Robinson Julia H.,
Clay Daniel L.
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
psychology in the schools
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.738
H-Index - 75
eISSN - 1520-6807
pISSN - 0033-3085
DOI - 10.1002/pits.20100
Subject(s) - anxiety , psychology , warning signs , trait anxiety , identification (biology) , clinical psychology , trait , poison control , injury prevention , suicide prevention , psychiatry , medical emergency , medicine , botany , transport engineering , computer science , engineering , biology , programming language
This study examined the relationship between teacher anxiety and their identification of warning signs of student violence. Fifty‐six public school teachers, 22 male and 34 female, between the ages of 23 and 60 participated. Participants identified warning signs in five fictional student case files created for this study and completed the State‐Trait Anxiety Inventory and a demographic survey. The case files included positive and negative information, and high‐ and low‐severity warning signs. Neither state ( r = .02) nor trait ( r = .04) anxiety was significantly correlated with high‐severity warning‐signs identification. Low‐severity warning‐signs identification was positively correlated with state anxiety ( r = .28, p < .05) but not trait anxiety ( r = .18, p > .05). False positive identification was not significantly related to state anxiety ( r = .07) or trait anxiety ( r = .06). The findings indicate that teachers who experience higher levels of state anxiety when confronted with warning signs of potential violence are better able to identify low‐severity warning signs than do their less anxious counterparts, without over‐identifying nonthreatening information as potential warning signs. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 42: 623–635, 2005.