Abstract
Purpose. This study examined the perceptions of high school security team members, which included site administrators and school security guards, in relation to the degree their group exhibited the seventeen characteristics of effective teams and overall quality of teamness , as measured by Harvey and Drolet's "Survey of Team Characteristics." Methodology. A descriptive research design was used to examine the perceptions of a total of 170 security team members from seventeen high schools across twelve school districts in Los Angeles County. Ordinal data based on scores reported on a nine-point Likert scale were analyzed using a two-sample t-test for the equality of means and frequency distribution tables. Findings. Significant differences between security guards and administrators were revealed on three of the seventeen characteristics that happened to all be found under the category of interaction. Surprisingly, each group's scores ranked the same two characteristics highest. Furthermore, two of the four characteristics with the lowest means were the same for both security guards and administrators. The frequency distribution data revealed a meaningful minority of security team members who ranked nine of the survey items with a score of 4 or less. Conclusions. Overall, the majority of high school security team members perceive all characteristics examined by this study to be in the "somewhat" to "very" characteristic of the group range. High school security team leaders must focus on ways to address the significant differences in perceptions between security guards and administrators related to the three characteristics where this occurred statistically. High school security teams need to find ways to improve and close the perception gap in the area dealing with their group's interaction. In order to improve the effectiveness of high school security teams it would be important to address the nine characteristics where a meaningful minority of security team members were found that perceive themselves to be in the "not" at all characteristic of the group range.