The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 43, No. 1 - 66

Michael Leytem * Emily Stark

RESULTS
Participants' Beliefs about Fire Safety
and Evacuations
A ﬁre safety knowledge scale was constructed
from the ﬁve general true/false ﬁre safety
items on the questionnaire. Participants'
average score on this ﬁre safety knowledge
scale was 4.43 (89% correct, SD = .71), indicating a relatively high level of accurate ﬁre
safety knowledge. However, when examining responses to the question of how many
minutes could elapse from when they hear a
ﬁre alarm to when they are in serious danger,
only 45% of participants responded with the
correct answer (as provided by the city ﬁre
marshal) of 0 to 3 minutes, whereas the remainder felt they had more time before a ﬁre
could become dangerous.

If groups of people participate in
non-evacuation behaviors during
ﬁre alarms, others may interpret the
lack of urgency as an indicator of a
non-threatening situation through the
effects of pluralistic ignorance.

When asked if a participant had ever
avoided a ﬁre alarm by staying in their residence hall room, 23.5% indicated they had,
while 73.5% indicated they had not. On
average, participants felt that 80.8% (SD =
24.3) of ﬁre alarms in their residence hall were
66

false. When asked the extent to which they
agreed with the statement, "My ﬁrst reaction
to every ﬁre alarm is that it is false," 60.9%
of participants agreed or strongly agreed, and
only 22.4% of participants disagreed with that
statement. A Mann-Whitney U test revealed
a signiﬁcant difference in perceptions of ﬁre
alarms based on previous behavior; participants who had previously avoided a ﬁre alarm
by staying in their room gave higher ratings
to the statement that their ﬁrst reaction to a
ﬁre alarm is thinking it is a false alarm (M =
3.87, SD = .91) compared to those who did not
report avoiding a ﬁre alarm (M = 3.40, SD =
1.12, Mann-Whitney U = 1699.0, p <.03).

Social Cues Scenario
In the scenario, participants were asked to
imagine that they were in the hallway of their
residence hall and heard a ﬁre alarm, and
they rated the likelihood of engaging in ﬁve
different behaviors in response to the alarm.
A Friedman's ANOVA was used to compare
participants' ratings across these ﬁve ordinal
scales, and found a signiﬁcant difference in
their reported behaviors in response to this
scenario (X2 (4) = 349.59, p <.0001). Speciﬁcally, participants ranked highest the behaviors of
surveying the situation, joining the group, and
exiting immediately, indicating that they would
be most likely to engage in these, and ranked
lowest the behaviors of ignoring the alarm or
going back to their room.
However, Mann-Whitney U tests showed signiﬁcant differences in participants' behavior
ratings based on whether they had previously
failed to evacuate in response to a ﬁre alarm.
Speciﬁcally, those participants who self-reported they previously failed to evacuate gave
higher ratings to the behavior of ignoring the

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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 43, No. 1

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