WORKPLACE VIOLENCE AT GOVERNMENT SITES

A government agency and its contractors employing nearly 96,000 worker s throughout the country was surveyed for documented incidents of viol ence in the workplace. Thirty-five occupational medicine and related p rofessionals (36% of those surveyed) from 27 locations returned the qu estionnaire. Of the responders, 20 individuals reported 74 incidents o f workplace violence, with nearly 30% of these occurrences involving w eapons, including II with guns. In a companion survey of human resourc e departments from 28 locations, there were 16 responders (57% of thos e surveyed) with 13 of them documenting 96 additional incidents. No du plicate reporting of the same event occurred between the two surveys. Approximately 70% of the agency workers were employed in locations cov ered by the 51 responders. Although the data are limited, the number o f incidents and level of violence appear to be increasing over time. O f the 108 incidents for which time of occurrence was known, 32 were de fined as ''very serious,'' which included physical assault, threat or assault with a weapon, murder suicide, or stalking. Verbal threats, ve rbal assaults, and vandalism were defined as ''serious'' incidents. A Cochran-Armitage trend test for an increasing proportion over time of ''very serious'' vs. ''serious'' events was statistically significant with a P-value of 0.026. (C) 1998 Wiley-Liss, Inc.