Institute for Employment Research (Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung, IAB), Nuremberg, Germany.
Research Centre of Demographic Change (FZDW), Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences (FRA-UAS), Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
BMC Public Health. 2022 Jan 10;22(1):62. doi: 10.1186/s12889-021-12370-8.
School injuries are an important adolescent health problem. Previous research suggests that relevant risk behaviors for school injuries, risk-taking and aggression, are highly susceptible to peer effects. Specifically, evidence suggests that the ratio of men and women in peer groups (sex ratio) affects individuals' propensity for aggression and risk-taking. However, potential associations of classroom sex ratios with adolescent school injury risks have not been studied so far. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the association of classroom sex compositions with adolescent school injuries.
We investigate the association of classroom sex ratios with school injuries in a longitudinal survey dataset containing 13,131 observations from 9,204 adolescent students (ages 13-16) from secondary schools in Germany. The data also allow us to identify injuries due to aggressive behavior and analyze these injuries in detail. We use multilevel logistic regression models to analyze risks of both overall and aggression-related school injuries.
Adolescent students' risk for school injuries is significantly and positively associated with male-skewed classroom sex ratios (OR = 1.012, p=0.012). Specifically, the risk of sustaining a school injury increases by 33.5 percent when moving from the 10 to the 90 classroom sex ratio percentile. Moreover, we find an even stronger positive association between male-dominated classrooms and aggression-related injury risks (OR = 1.022, p=0.010). Compared to classroom sex ratios at the 10 percentile, the risk of an aggression-related injury is 78 percent higher in classrooms with a sex ratio at the 90 percentile. Finally, we find that both boys' and girls' injury risks equally increase with a higher proportion of male students in their classroom.
Our findings indicate that sex composition of classrooms is an important contextual factor for adolescent school injuries, in particular school injuries resulting from aggression. These findings illustrate the need to integrate a contextual perspective on school injuries among adolescent students both into research and into intervention planning.
学校伤害是青少年健康的一个重要问题。先前的研究表明，与学校伤害相关的风险行为，如冒险行为和攻击行为，极易受到同伴效应的影响。具体来说，有证据表明同伴群体中的男女比例（性别比例）会影响个人的攻击和冒险倾向。然而，目前还没有研究课堂性别比例与青少年学校伤害风险之间的潜在关联。本文旨在探讨课堂性别构成与青少年学校伤害风险之间的关系。
我们在一项纵向调查数据集中研究了课堂性别比例与学校伤害之间的关系，该数据集包含了德国中学 9204 名 13-16 岁青少年学生的 13131 个观察值。这些数据还允许我们识别出因攻击行为导致的伤害，并对这些伤害进行详细分析。我们使用多层次逻辑回归模型分析了整体和与攻击相关的学校伤害风险。
青少年学生的学校伤害风险与男性偏斜的课堂性别比例显著正相关（OR=1.012，p=0.012）。具体来说，从第 10 个班级性别比例百分位数到第 90 个班级性别比例百分位数，受伤风险增加了 33.5%。此外，我们发现男性主导的课堂与与攻击相关的伤害风险之间存在更强的正相关关系（OR=1.022，p=0.010）。与处于第 10 个班级性别比例百分位数的课堂相比，处于第 90 个班级性别比例百分位数的课堂中，与攻击相关的伤害风险增加了 78%。最后，我们发现，男孩和女孩的受伤风险都会随着课堂中男生比例的增加而同等增加。
我们的研究结果表明，课堂性别构成是青少年学校伤害的一个重要背景因素，特别是因攻击行为导致的学校伤害。这些发现说明了在青少年学生中，将学校伤害的背景视角纳入研究和干预规划的必要性。
