ABSTRACT
As a result of the shootings at Virginia Tech, colleges and universities in collaboration with federal and state agencies have developed emergency management plans to prepare for active shooter situations. In Ohio, the collaboration resulted in its public universities reporting that they had developed emergency preparedness plans to address active shooter situations. Historically, faculty have played a critical role in responding to shootings but have not been a focus of active shooter preparedness research in higher education. The purpose of this study was to investigate the self-reported preparedness of higher education faculty in their roles as responders in active shooter situations as well as to identify factors that were related to their reported preparedness. In this study, survey data were collected from 761 faculty recruited from the public, four-year universities in Ohio. The survey the faculty completed included subscales related to their institutions' active shooter preparedness planning and training processes as well as faculty report of their self-efficacy to respond. Correlation and multiple regression analyses were completed to determine significant relationships and predictors of faculty preparedness. The statistical analyses identified 46 significant relationships out of 78 comparisons among the identified variables with the strongest relationship being a moderate strength correlation between institutional planning and training subscale scores. In addition, there were eight significant predictors of faculty report of preparedness to respond to an active shooter situation identified with self-efficacy as the strongest predictor. Limitations include the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the recruitment of participants as well as the inability to tie results back to specific institutions. Implications for theory, policymakers, and practitioners are discussed as well as suggestions for future research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)