Abstract
Three waves of longitudinal data from a high poverty sample of 1544 African American youth were used to test an ecological-transactional model of violence. SEM analyses were conducted to determine whether parenting (Time 2) mediated the effects of exposure to violence (Time 1) on violent behaviors (Time 3). Findings supported the specified model. Multigroup SEM analyses indicated that neither family structure nor developmental stage (early versus middle/late adolescence) moderated these effects. However, exposure to violence had a larger effect on violent behaviors in female versus male youth, although the difference was simply in magnitude, not direction. A final model that predicted change scores also provided support for the hypothesized ecological-transactional model of violence.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1321-1341 |
| Number of pages | 21 |
| Journal | Journal of Adolescence |
| Volume | 32 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Oct 2009 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This research was supported by a cooperative agreement administered by the National Institute for Child and Human Development (HD300060) and by support from the University of Alabama, the cities of Mobile and Prichard, Alabama, the Mobile Housing Board, and the Mobile County Health Department. We would like to thank all participants, without whom this research would not be possible as well as Debra McCallum, Brad Lian, and Holli Drummond, who were heavily involved in developing data collection protocols. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Biennial Meetings of the Society for Research on Adolescence in San Francisco, CA (March 23–26, 2006).
Keywords
- Adolescent development
- Crime and delinquent behavior
- Exposure to violence
- Inner city/urban youth
- Parents and parenting
- Violence
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Pediatrics, Perinatology, and Child Health
- Social Psychology
- Developmental and Educational Psychology
- Psychiatry and Mental health
