O’Brennan, Waasdorp, and Bradshaw (2014) conducted a qualitative study to explore four key aspects of staff connectedness: a) personal connectedness to school, b) student-staff relationships, c) staff connectedness to administrators, and d) staff relationships with fellow employees as it relates to comfort intervening with bullying. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to examine the association between school staff perceptions of connectedness and their comfort intervening with general bullying situations. The sample included 5,064 adults who were members of the National Education Association (NEA) at the time of data collection and were actively employed by a school system. Participants included both teachers (n=2,163) and education
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Confirmatory factor analysis was used to assess the first of the four connectedness variables (personal connectedness, staff-staff connectedness, principal connectedness, and staff-student connectedness). An acceptable fit was demonstrated with CFI=0.95, Tucker-Lewis index (TLI)=0.94, root-mean square error of approximation (RMSEA)=0.03, and standardized root-mean-square residual (SMSR)=0.04. The latent variable for “comfort intervening with general bullying” was made up of four different forms of bullying (physical, relational, verbal, and cyber) and demonstrated an adequate fit with CFI=0.99, TLI=0.96, RMSEA=0.06, and SRMR=0.02. The study found that staff members’ close relationship with students and their colleagues had a positive impact on their comfort intervening with bullying students and victims. Of all the domains of connectedness, the only domain found not to improve the efforts at decreasing bullying was the domain of staff relationships with administration. The study also found that simply having policies and programs available targeted at decreasing and preventing bullying was not enough. Staff who are actively engaged in school-wide programming are more apt to help youth involved in bullying. Some limitations of this study include the use of self-reporting which can bring into question the validity of
Confirmatory factor analysis was used to assess the first of the four connectedness variables (personal connectedness, staff-staff connectedness, principal connectedness, and staff-student connectedness). An acceptable fit was demonstrated with CFI=0.95, Tucker-Lewis index (TLI)=0.94, root-mean square error of approximation (RMSEA)=0.03, and standardized root-mean-square residual (SMSR)=0.04. The latent variable for “comfort intervening with general bullying” was made up of four different forms of bullying (physical, relational, verbal, and cyber) and demonstrated an adequate fit with CFI=0.99, TLI=0.96, RMSEA=0.06, and SRMR=0.02. The study found that staff members’ close relationship with students and their colleagues had a positive impact on their comfort intervening with bullying students and victims. Of all the domains of connectedness, the only domain found not to improve the efforts at decreasing bullying was the domain of staff relationships with administration. The study also found that simply having policies and programs available targeted at decreasing and preventing bullying was not enough. Staff who are actively engaged in school-wide programming are more apt to help youth involved in bullying. Some limitations of this study include the use of self-reporting which can bring into question the validity of