title: Are school-level factors associated with primary school students' experience of physical violence from school staff in Uganda?
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The nature and structure of the school environment has the potential to shape children's health and well being. Few studies have explored the importance of school-level factors in explaining a child's likelihood of experiencing violence from school staff, particularly in low-resource settings such as Uganda.
  
  
  METHODS
  To quantify to what extent a student's risk of violence is determined by school-level factors we fitted multilevel logistic regression models to investigate associations and present between-school variance partition coefficients. School structural factors, academic and supportive environment are explored.
  
  
  RESULTS
  53% of students reported physical violence from staff. Only 6% of variation in students' experience of violence was due to differences between schools and half the variation was explained by the school-level factors modelled. Schools with a higher proportion of girls are associated with increased odds of physical violence from staff. Students in schools with a high level of student perceptions of school connectedness have a 36% reduced odds of experiencing physical violence from staff, but no other school-level factor was significantly associated.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our findings suggest that physical violence by school staff is widespread across different types of schools in this setting, but interventions that improve students' school connectedness should be considered.
authors.affiliation: London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, 15-17 Tavistock Place, London, UK Louise.knight@lshtm.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Louise
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Knight
authors.affiliation: Raising Voices, 16 Tufnell Drive, Kamwokya P.O. Box 6770, Kampala, Uganda.
authors.forename: Janet
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Nakuti
authors.affiliation: London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, 15-17 Tavistock Place, London, UK.
authors.forename: Elizabeth
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Allen
authors.affiliation: London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, 15-17 Tavistock Place, London, UK.
authors.forename: Katherine R
authors.initials: KR
authors.lastname: Gannett
authors.affiliation: Raising Voices, 16 Tufnell Drive, Kamwokya P.O. Box 6770, Kampala, Uganda.
authors.forename: Dipak
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Naker
authors.affiliation: London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, 15-17 Tavistock Place, London, UK.
authors.forename: Karen M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Devries
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D004777:Environment; D005178:Faculty / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D000066550:Physical Abuse / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011203:Poverty / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012574:Schools / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D017678:Sex Distribution; D013334:Students / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D014454:Uganda / Q000453:epidemiology
keywords: Multilevel logistic regression; School connectedness; Schools; Uganda; Variance partition coefficient; Violence