A Queensland University of Technology study will look at how student connectedness or feelings of belonging at school can reduce risk-taking behaviour and associated injury in young people.
Rebekah Chapman, a Senior Research Officer with QUT's Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety Queensland (CARRS-Q), received a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) grant of $82,689 plus an top up from QUT's Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation (IHBI) of $30,930 over three years for the PhD study.
The study is part of a large-scale research project Ms Chapman has worked on for a number of years, involving the design, implementation and evaluation of a curriculum-based injury prevention program for early adolescents, focusing on first aid and prevention strategies including peer protection.
"Being connected means that students feel they are a part of the school and that adults in the school care about and are supportive of them," said Ms Chapman.
"It is a really important factor and has been shown to help reduce adolescents' high levels of health risk behaviours, including alcohol use, delinquency, violence and more."
The project aims to determine whether connectedness can also have an effect on the very high rate of adolescent injury that begins to increase from age 13-14 years, and which is associated with a corresponding increase in risk-taking behaviour, including transport and violence risks.
In the first stage of the study, Ms Chapman and her fellow researchers will talk with teachers and students about what connectedness means to them, their perceptions of factors that increase connectedness and strategies that teachers and principals find useful to engage students.
"These findings will be used to develop a series of professional development workshops for teachers which will be piloted using volunteer schools. The impact on risk-taking behaviour and injury will be measured using student self-report questionnaires which have been trialled over a number of years," she said.
"International work indicates that connectedness is important but to date its role in injury prevention is unknown. This study is innovative in that it will find out if it makes a difference in students' participation in risk behaviours and associated injury.
"Overseas studies have shown that connected students are less likely to truant or be absent from school, and because a lot of risk taking behaviours come about when adolescents are truant, it is likely that this approach will have an impact."
Ms Chapman will begin her teacher and student interviews later this year and she hopes to trial the connectedness program in the last term of this school year.
Media contact: Sharon Thompson, QUT media officer - 3138 4494 or sharon.thompson@qut.edu.au
**Hi-res pics available for media
