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. 2025 Jun;53(4):429-436.
doi: 10.1177/14034948241252232. Epub 2024 Jun 10.

Association of school neighbourhood socioeconomic disadvantage and teaching staff's risk of violence at work

Jenni Ervasti  1 , Jaana Pentti  1   2   3   4 , Ville Aalto  1 , Maarit Kauppi  1 , Marianna Virtanen  5   6 , Mika Kivimäki  1   2   7 , Jussi Vahtera  3   4
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Association of school neighbourhood socioeconomic disadvantage and teaching staff's risk of violence at work

Jenni Ervasti et al. Scand J Public Health. 2025 Jun.

Abstract

Aim: The aim of this study was to determine the association between neighbourhood socioeconomic disadvantage and teaching staff's risk of workplace violence and whether workplace psychosocial resources can act as effect modifiers.

Methods: Primary school teaching staff in the six largest cities in Finland responded to a survey in 2018 and were linked to information on school neighbourhood disadvantage obtained from the national grid database (n = 3984).

Results: After adjustment for confounders, staff working in schools located in the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods had a 1.2-fold (95% confidence interval 1.07-1.35) risk of encountering violence or threat of violence compared with staff working in the most advantaged neighbourhoods. The association was less marked in schools with strong support from colleagues (risk ratio 1.14, 95% confidence interval (95% CI) 0.98-1.32 for high support versus 1.23, 95% CI 1.07-1.43 for low/intermediate support), a strong culture of collaboration (1.08, 95% CI 0.93-1.26 versus 1.31, 95% CI 1.12-1.53), high leadership quality (1.12, 95% CI 0.96-1.31 versus 1.29, 95% CI 1.08-1.54), and high organizational justice (1.09, 95% CI 0.91-1.32 versus 1.29, 95% CI 1.09-1.52).

Conclusions: The association between school neighbourhood and teaching staff's risk of violence was weaker in schools with high workplace psychosocial resources, suggesting that targeting these factors might help in minimizing violence at schools, but future intervention studies are needed to confirm or refute this hypothesis.

Keywords: area-level indicator; multi-level analysis; neighbourhood disadvantage; teaching staff; violence at work; workplace psychosocial resource.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of conflicting interestsThe authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
The association between school neighbourhood socioeconomic disadvantage (socioeconomic status, SES) and workplace violence or threat of violence among teachers in analysis stratified by workplace psychosocial resources. CI: confidence interval; RR: risk ratio; SES: socioeconomic status.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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