Safety Perceptions and Door-Related School Security: A Multisource Investigation

This multisource study combined physical site assessments and stakeholder surveys to evaluate door-related security conditions, parent and teacher safety perceptions, and the extent to which those perceptions corresponded with observed conditions across a sample of Arizona Pre-K–12 schools. Researchers conducted physical evaluations of 3,712 doors and collected survey data from 614 parents and 384 teachers. Findings indicated that many schools met several structural security benchmarks, while important door-related vulnerabilities remained, including nonfunctional interior locks and limited reinforced hardware. In multilevel analyses using school-level door-security scores to predict adult safety perceptions, coefficients were uniformly positive but statistically nonsignificant. Respondents also reported feeling safe in the presence of several highly visible features whose effectiveness in intruder events is mixed in prior literature. The results suggest that routine door maintenance, clearer stakeholder communication, and stronger attention to safety climate may warrant consideration.