[Accidental injuries among elementary school children and some of their environmental factors]

I investigated 4960 accidental injuries which occurred among elementary school children between April 1991 and March 1992, using reports of school accidents submitted to the Shiga branch of the National Studium and School Health Center of Japan. Data on six school environmental factors (i.e. the areas of school land, schoolhouse, gymnasium and all classrooms, the number of children per class, and the total number of children in each school) for 223 elementary schools were gathered. From these data, the relationship between the incidence rates of injuries and the above school environmental factors were analyzed. The overall average incidence rate for all injuries combined was 5.43 cases per 100 children. For all injuries and fractures which occurred at smaller schools, the incidence rates tended to increase with the areas of school land, schoolhouse, gymnasium and all classrooms, and to decrease as the number of children per class and the number of children in the school increased. These results may have been biased by the fact that only injuries treated at a cost of at least 3000 yen were reported. In the process of stepwise multiple regression analysis between the injury-rates and environmental factors, a few variables relating to types of injuries were included as statistically significant factors in the well-fitted equations, but the coefficients of determination (squared multiple correlation coefficients) in the equations were small.