Perceptions and Predictions with School Climate: Analyzing the Comprehensive School Climate Inventory

Through multiple regression and analysis of variance, data from the Comprehensive School Climate Inventory was used to understand the following: 1.) the predictive ability of student perceptions of safety on overall school climate; 2.) the relationship between geographic location and school climate; and 3.) the predictive ability of geographic location and school type on overall school climate. Participants were elementary school students, grades PreK through 8, from 30 elementary schools across the country, with approximately 4,500 student responses. Results showed that students’ perceptions of school safety predicted 80% of the variances in connection to ratings of school climate. There was also a significant relationship between geographic location and ratings of school climate, as students from suburban schools tended to rate their climate as more positive than students from urban or rural schools. Lastly, the results showed that together, school type and geographic location are not able to sufficiently predict ratings of school climate, only explaining 4% of the variance in school climate ratings