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Deborah Azrael, PhD, Harvard Injury Control Research Center, Harvard School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, 617 432 0473, azrael@hsph.harvard.edu, Jennifer Greenberg-Seth, MS, Harvard University School of Public Health, Harvard Injury Control Research Center, 677 Huntington Ave, 3rd Floor, Boston, MA 02115, and David Hemenway, PhD, Health Policy and Management, Harvard University, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115.
Purpose: To examine the association between exposure to violence (ETV) and self-reported interpersonal behavior (fighting, bullying, cooperation) in an urban, inner-city middle school population. Methods: Data come from a survey of 557 sixth grade students in regular education classes in five inner-city middle schools. The primary dependent variables are self-reported measures of fighting, bullying and cooperation adapted from the Modified Aggression Scale. Independent variables include validated scales measuring ETV and student psychosocial characteristics (self-efficacy, empathy, school cohesion, consideration). Bivariate analyses were conducted using chi-square tests for differences in proportions. Multivariate analyses use negative binomial models. Results: 97% of children in the sample reported that they had been exposed to at least one act of community violence in their lifetime, and 20% of students had high exposure across all community violence items. Youth who reported higher levels of ETV were less likely to have high self-efficacy (p<0.05), high school cohesion (p<0.01), and high consideration (p<0.01) scores, but no less likely to have high empathy scores. In multivariate analyses, students who had an average exposure to violence of “many” times were almost twice as likely as those with the lowest ETV scores to report fighting (RR 1.9, CI 1.8-2.1) and almost 4 times more likely (RR 3.9, CI 2.4, 6.4) to report having bullied. ETV was not associated with cooperation scores. Conclusions: This study adds to the body of evidence that exposure to high levels of violence has a host of deleterious effects on children.
Learning Objectives: Participants will be able to
Keywords: , Youth Violence
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.