Date of Award

9-15-2015

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Department

Education

First Advisor

John Kuykendall

Abstract

In addition to creating a campus environment that could save lives, concepts including recruitment, retention, accountability, assessment, and federal funding are all connected to a university's emergency preparedness plan. Current literature has primarily focused on secondary educational settings or recommendations for action in response to major violent events like Virginia Tech and methods to try to identify a threat. The purpose of the current study was to investigate factors influencing whether students chose to "opt-in" and receive emergency notifications from the university. The study also utilized a modified version of Lenski's (1992) Campus Safety Survey that was constructed using the Safety Belief Model, which was developed from the Health Belief Model and crime literature. The Safety Belief Model consists of five variables that include: motivation to comply with recommended behavior, perceived susceptibility to campus crime, perceived severity of crime victimization, perceived benefits of taking precautions, and perceived barriers to taking precautions. The modifying variables included demographic variables, and participation in the university emergency notification program. The dependent variable was the intent score that is derived from the predicted use of safety precautions that included: walking with a friend after dark, contacting a friend to walk with after dark, calling campus escort service after dark, avoiding poorly lit paths, locking residence hall room door at night, locking residence hall windows, closing propped exterior doors, arranging for first dates in familiar surroundings, avoiding leaving parties with new acquaintances, and notifying campus police of suspicious persons. The sample comprised of 204 participants from a four-year public university in the South. The participants completed the Campus Safety Behavior Survey that assessed their campus safety perceptions, safety behavior intentions, and participation in emergency notification systems. The data were analyzed using multiple regression analysis to answer the general research question: What variables or combination of variables predicts the intended safety-related behavior of full-time residential students? The analyses identified four factors that significantly contributed to the prediction of intended safety behavior including motivation to comply, perceived barriers, gender, and ethnicity. Significant differences were also found between genders and classification and students' participation in crime awareness programs on campus. There was no statistically significant difference for gender, ethnicity, classification, or residential status in regards to participation in emergency notification systems. Implications of the findings and recommendations for future research are discussed.

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