A comparative study of school accident frequencies in integrated and non-integrated safety instruction

The purpose of this study was to compare integrated vs. non-integrated methods of safety instruction to determine differences in subsequent school accidents. The study was designed to answer the following major question: Is there a difference in the frequency of school accidents between students completing integrated safety instruction and those completing non-integrated safety instruction?

A selected Tennessee city school system (elementary K-6 grades) was utilized in this study. All K-6 students in the selected city school system were given either the integrated safety education program or the non-integrated safety education program for academic school year 1979-1980. Accident reports were then collected from the participants of the programs for academic school year 1980-1981.

The findings as a result of analysis of the data supported the following conclusions:

1. The integrated method of safety instruction had a lower frequency of accidents for stu-dents in K-6 grades (students 5-14 years of age) than the non-integrated method of safety instruction.

2. Of the variables examined for their relationship to frequency of accident by type of instructional program, these were found occurrence (non-integrated students had a higher frequency of accidents in areas significant: sex of the student (males had a higher accident frequency than did females in either program but the significance was more pronounced in the non-integrated program), place of accident other than playground/physical education), injury sustained (non-integrated students had a higher frequency of serious injury accidents than integrated students), how the accident occurred (non-integrated students had a higher frequency of accidents that were play related than did integrated students), and accident seriousness (non-integrated students had a higher frequency of serious treatment accidents than integrated students). The following variables showed no significant relationship: grade level (K-6), age of the student (5-14 years), and month of accident occurrence (August through June).