Effects of Violence Prevention Behavior on Exposure to Workplace Violence and Threats: A Follow-Up Study

Abstract

This longitudinal study investigates the relationship between prevention behaviors, that is, enacted violence prevention policies, and exposure to workplace violence and threats across four different high risk work sectors: psychiatry, special schools, eldercare, and the prison and probation services. Logistic regression analysis of a 1-year follow-up sample of 3.016 employees from these four sectors shows that prevention behaviors are significantly and negatively associated with self-reported exposure to workplace violence and threats-in the prison and probation services, eldercare, and in psychiatry, while no significant associations are found for special schools. The results therefore show clear sector differences with regard to the preventive effect of violence prevention behaviors. Furthermore, this multisector comparison suggests that prevention behaviors are more effective in relation to a moderate frequency of violence and threats, and that only top management prevention behavior can prevent very frequent incidents (odds ratio [ OR] = 0.58). This study contributes to the literature by use of a longitudinal design and acceptable response rates, while also simultaneously investigating several high risk sectors. The results imply that when managing workplace violence in high risk areas of human service work, there should be emphasis on the use of violence prevention behaviors from top management, supervisor, and among coworkers. However, type of sector and the frequency of workplace violence should be analyzed to evaluate the potential impact of prevention behaviors.

Prevalência e fatores associados à violência no ambiente de trabalho em agentes de segurança penitenciária do sexo feminino no Brasil

“…O suporte social entre colegas de trabalho é referenciado como um importante mecanismo para aliviar os efeitos negativos entre os trabalhadores após a ocorrência de episódios envolvendo agressões e violências, contribuindo para o reestabelecimento do seu bem estar físico e emocional 4 . É responsável ainda por atenuar o estresse e o sofrimento psicológico 28,29 .…”

“…As particularidades inerentes a essas categorias profissionais contribuem para que os trabalhadores estejam mais expostos a esses eventos 4 .…”

“…No caso dos ASP, o contato direto com a população privada de liberdade, superlotações, rebeliões e o baixo efetivo de profissionais em relação à população encarcerada figuram entre as principais causas para a ocorrência de agressões e ameaças no ambiente prisional 4 . Somam-se, ainda, a diversidade de funções exercidas pelos ASP no âmbito do sistema penitenciário, tais como ressocializar, vigiar e disciplinar os indivíduos em privação de liberdade 5 .…”

Organizational Prevention and Management Strategies for Workplace Aggression Among Child Protection Workers: A Project Protocol for the Oslo Workplace Aggression Survey (OWAS)

“…Exposure to physical violence and threats of violence from children, youths, and their relatives will be assessed using a 21-item questionnaire. The majority of the items are taken from two established indicators for assessing workplace violence (Barling et al, 2001;Gadegaard et al, 2018), whereas some were developed for this study in order to fully capture the forms of violence that child protection employees can experience. The added items were based on suggestions from the reference group.…”

“…An example item is "Employees' psychological health is taken seriously at my workplace." Violent prevention behavior at the top management, supervisor, and co-worker levels will be measured with the nine-item scale developed by Gadegaard et al (2018). Example items are "Invests a lot of time and money in violence-prevention training for workers" (top management), "Your supervisor encourages staff to report physical violence" (supervisor), and "Your co-workers give sufficient help and support after a violent or threatening incident" (co-worker).…”