Prevalence of Community and School violence.

 

Dr. Stein’s presentation focused on four main themes underlying community violence prevalence: (1) Types of exposure to violence; (2) predictors of exposure; (3) exposure in different contexts; and (4) relative gaps in our knowledge. Community violence can be described in terms of direct and indirect exposure as well as the nature of the violence (weapon-related, criminal, and physical). There are substantial variations in estimates of weapon-related, criminal, and physical violence in the literature, and very little data, except for the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, on children’s exposure to violence in the general population. Most data reports come from children in high risk areas. Despite these inconsistencies, the general predictors of violence exposure include being male, being an older child, being an ethnic minority, living in urban areas, low socioeconomic status (SES), and early conduct problems. There is also a lot of misinformation about violence exposure in schools. For instance, single victim homicides are declining while multi-victim homicides are increasing. Overall, the numbers are small but draw a lot of attention. Witnessing and being a victim of threats and physical violence are quite common in schools. However, this must be placed in context. Children spend more time in school and thus may be more likely to experience violence in school. However, little is known about violence exposure in schools, particularly for U.S. communities and compared to other countries. Some of the key knowledge gaps in community violence include variations in prevalence estimates due to differences in sample characteristics, measures of what constitutes violence, and reporting methods. We also need to know how often violence is occurring, whether exposure to violence is changing over time, and longitudinal studies to measure the chronicity of violence exposure. Characteristics of violence are seldom reported in the literature in terms of the relationship to the perpetrator and the social context. In addition, most reports are of at-risk populations. Finally, it is important to distinguish between bullying and other types of violence. Children think about bullying more than other types of violence. We also need to look at the relationship between community violence exposure and other health risk behaviors.


Bradley D. Stein, M.D., MPH, RAND and University of Southern California.

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