According to the UCR data for 15-24 year olds, the male homicide rate in 2013 was 18 times higher for Blacks than for Whites. Recent programs like “Becoming a Man” developed by Chicago nonprofit group Youth Guidance and policies like “My Brother’s Keeper” initiated by President Obama have made use of the data regarding Black crime rates in an attempt to find potential solutions. Read the following two articles that present recent crime data regarding urban youth crime and potential preventive measure that can be taken.
Read “Youth Exposure to Violence Prevention Programs in a National Sample” and “Preventing Youth Violence: Opportunities for Action.”
In of 750-1,000 words, address the following:
- According to David-Ferdon and Simon (2014), why is youth violence such a critical problem, and what are the costs?
- Describe the study design used by Finkelhor et al. (2014). Include the sample population, and data collection and analysis methods. What were the limitations of this type of study? What were the findings?
- Overall, what does the evidence show to be true about youth violence prevention programs, and how should they be implemented in the future to be most effective?
Be sure to cite three to five relevant scholarly sources in support of your content. Use only sources found at the GCU Library, government websites or those provided in Class Resources.
Prepare this assignment according to APA Style.
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Child Abuse & Neglect 38 (2014) 677–686
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Child Abuse & Neglect
outh exposure to violence prevention programs in a ational sample�
avid Finkelhora,∗, Jennifer Vandermindena, Heather Turnera, nne Shattucka, Sherry Hambyb
Crimes Against Children Research Center, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, USA Sewanee the University of the South, Sewanee, TN, USA
r t i c l e i n f o
rticle history: eceived 10 October 2013 eceived in revised form 17 January 2014 ccepted 21 January 2014 vailable online 12 March 2014
eywords: ullying rime ictimization exual assault ating violence
a b s t r a c t
This paper assesses how many children and youth have had exposure to programs aimed at preventing various kinds of violence perpetration and victimization. Based on a national sample of children 5–17, 65% had ever been exposed to a violence prevention program, 55% in the past year. Most respondents (71%) rated the programs as very or somewhat helpful. Younger children (5–9) who had been exposed to higher quality prevention programs had lower levels of peer victimization and perpetration. But the association did not apply to older youth or youth exposed to lower quality programs. Disclosure to authorities was also more common for children with higher quality program exposure who had experienced peer victimizations or conventional crime victimizations. The findings are consistent with possible benefits from violence prevention education programs. However, they also suggest that too few programs currently include efficacious components.
© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
What is known on this topic?
Many schools profess to use violence prevention programs. Evaluations have shown some such programs to be effective.
What this study adds
This study provides some of the first national data on how many children actually were exposed to prevention programs. It also reveals how they react to the programs.
ntroduction
Youth violence prevention has been a major public policy initiative in the United States for at least a generation. Hundreds
f educational prevention programs have been developed, with a wide variety of targets including dating violence, sex- al assault, bullying, and gang violence. They include locally developed efforts and curricula designed and disseminated y national research and development operations, such as the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program (Olweus & Limber,
� For the purposes of compliance with Section 507 of PL 104-208 (the “Stevens Amendment”), readers are advised that 100% of the funds for this program re derived from federal sources, (this project was supported by Grant Nos. 2006-JW-BX-0003 and 2009-JW-BX-0018 awarded by the Office of Juvenile ustice and Delinquency Prevention, Office of Justice Programs, US Department of Justice). The total amount of federal funding involved is $2,848,809. oints of view or opinions in this document are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the US Department f Justice. The authors have no financial relationships relevant to this article to disclose. ∗ Corresponding author address: CCRC, University of New Hampshire, 126 Horton Social Science Center, 20 Academic Way, Durham, NH 03824, USA.
145-2134/$ – see front matter © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. ttp://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2014.01.010
678 D. Finkelhor et al. / Child Abuse & Neglect 38 (2014) 677–686
2010) (http://www.violencepreventionworks.org/public/olweus bullying prevention program.page) and Steps to Respect (http://www.cfchildren.org/steps-to-respect.aspx). Many research studies and meta-analyses have also been conducted to assess the value of such programs and guide their development (Hahn et al., 2007a, 2007b; Park-Higgerson, Perumean- Chaney, Bartolucci, Grimley, & Singh, 2008; Wilson & Lipsey, 2007; Wilson, Lipsey, & Derzon, 2003). Overall, they have shown that programs can reduce violence and aggression, but that many do not (Mytton, DiGuiseppi, Gough, Taylor, & Logan, 2002; Ttofi & Farrington, 2011). A consensus has developed that in order to be effective, such programs need to have certain components such as adequate dosage, multiple components, varied teaching methods, and opportunities to practice (Cooper, Lutenbacher, & Faccia, 2000; Dusenbury, Brannigan, Falco, & Hansen, 2003; Jones, 2012; Nation et al., 2003).
In spite of the large violence prevention mobilization and indications of effectiveness, there are reasons to think that program dissemination has stalled. Schools, which are the venue for much prevention, have been challenged in recent years by budget cuts and mandates to improve learning outcomes in the conventional curriculum, leading them to abandon prevention programs (Ahmed-Ullah, 2012; National School Safety and Security Services, 2010).
There has been little formal monitoring of how many schools and communities make prevention programs available or how many children are exposed to such programs. In the early 2000s, the U.S. Department of Education commissioned a systematic study that found that violence prevention curricula were present in 75% of middle schools, 71% of high schools, and 56% of elementary schools (Cantor et al., 2001; U.S. Department of Education, 2011). However, the report noted a dearth of information about whether some programs are more effective than others and whether certain program characteristics lead to effective outcomes.
Collecting information from schools is one way of tracking prevention efforts, but querying students and families about their experiences with prevention programs is another crucial component. We had the opportunity to assess children’s exposure to prevention programming as part of a national survey on children’s exposure to violence. This paper reports the findings.
Methods
Participants
The National Survey of Children’s Exposure to Violence II (NatSCEV II) is a “non-experimental” study designed to obtain up-to-date incidence and prevalence estimates of a wide range of childhood exposure to violence and related risk factors. It consisted of a national sample of 4,503 children and youth ages one month to 17 years in 2011. Study interviews were conducted over the phone by the employees of an experienced survey research firm. For this analysis, we used a subset of 3,391children ages 5–17 for whom we had information on prevention programming exposure.
The primary foundation of the design was a nationwide sampling frame of residential telephone numbers from which a sample of telephone households was drawn by random digit dialing (RDD). Two additional samples were obtained in order to represent the growing number of households that rely entirely or mostly on cell-phones: a small national sample of cellular telephone numbers drawn from RDD methodology (N = 31), and an Address-Based Sample (ABS; N = 750). The ABS sample started with a national sample of addresses from the Postal Delivery Sequence File (DSF). These addresses were mailed a one page questionnaire. The ABS study sample was drawn from the pool of returned questionnaires that represented households with children 17 years old and younger. These households were then re-contacted by interviewers and asked to participate in the survey. Approximately one-half of the eligible households obtained through ABS were cell-phone-only households, and thus this method represented an effective way of including households without landlines in our sample.
Procedure
Respondents were promised complete confidentiality and were paid $20 for their participation. The interviews, averaging 55 min in length, were conducted in either English or Spanish. Respondents who disclosed a situation of serious threat or ongoing victimization were re-contacted by a clinical member of the research team, trained in telephone crisis counseling, whose responsibility was to stay in contact with the respondent until the situation was appropriately addressed locally. All procedures were authorized by the Institutional Review Board of the University of New Hampshire. To begin, a short interview was conducted with an adult caregiver (usually a parent) to obtain family demographic information. One child was then randomly selected from all eligible children living in a household by selecting the child with the most recent birthday. If the selected child was 10–17 years old, the main telephone interview was conducted with the child. If the selected child was under age 10, the interview was conducted with the caregiver who “is most familiar with the child’s daily routine and experiences.” To address the possibility that caregivers might have systematically different levels of knowledge about
prevention programs than youth themselves we examined rates of exposure to programming among 9-year-old children (oldest age of proxy reports) and 10-year-old children (youngest age of self-reports). Exposure in these two groups was similar, so we analyzed caregiver reports and youth self-reports together for the purposes of this paper, controlling for age and testing for interaction effects by age.
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esponse rates
The cooperation rate (the percentage of contacted respondents who completed the survey) and response rate (the per- entage of all eligible respondents who completed the survey) averaged across collection modalities were 60% and 40%, espectively. More details about the methodology are available in Finkelhor, Turner, Shattuck, and Hamby (2013).
easurement
Prevention programming. Respondents were asked if they (or their child) ever had any of five types of prevention programs nd if so, whether the program had occurred in the past year. (It read: “Many schools or community programs teach kids bout how to avoid becoming a victim of violence. (Has your child/have you) ever been to a program about any of the ollowing?”). Questions were presented about bullying, violence avoidance, sexual assault, and avoiding gangs if children ere over the age of five. Only children over the age of 12 were asked about exposure to prevention programs on dating
iolence. Respondents were also asked about characteristics and helpfulness of the most recent prevention program they or their child) attended. A full list of the prevention questions can be found in Appendix A.
A higher quality program variable was computed using the following characteristics: sent home information to parents, sked parents to come to meetings, included role play within the classroom in programming, and programming lasted or more than one day. These elements have been deemed important to effective school based prevention (Jones, 2012), lthough the literature is not well-developed enough to deem all such elements essential for all ages and all subject matters. o create the higher quality program variable, we summed the four components (with a maximum score of 4), and then ook the programs in the top quartile, which was the equivalent of programs with 3 or 4 of the higher quality program haracteristics. The low quality group and the no-exposure-to-programming group were combined resulting in a variable omparing children who were exposed to high quality programs coded as 1 and children who were not exposed to any rograms and children who were exposed to low quality prevention program, coded as 0. Responses to quality program ariables that were not sure or refused (5.6% of program participants) were coded as not of high quality.
Victimization. Although the design of the study is cross sectional and not longitudinal, we were interested in whether ast year victimization rates might be lower for children with prevention program exposure over their life course. The urvey used an enhanced version of the Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire (JVQ) which obtains reports on 54 forms of ffenses against youth that cover six general areas of concern: conventional crime, child maltreatment, peer and sibling ictimization, sexual victimization, witnessing and indirect victimization, and Internet victimization. Follow-up questions or each screener item gathered additional information, including perpetrator characteristics, whether the event occurred n conjunction with another screener event, and whether the child disclosed the event to an adult. Specific wording of all ictimization questions may be found in Finkelhor et al. (2013).
Peer/sibling victimization. Eight questions asking about specific victimizations by peers or siblings were combined into a ingle aggregate variable indicating whether the child or youth had experienced any peer/sibling victimization in the past ear. The eight items asked about gang/group assault, peer/sibling assault, genital assault, physical intimidation, emotional ictimization, dating violence, peer lies/rumors, and social exclusion.
Conventional crime. Nine items from the JVQ covering theft, robbery, vandalism, attempted assault, threatened assault, ssault with a weapon, assault without a weapon, attempted kidnapping, and bias attack (based on skin color, religion, or isability) were combined to measure whether or not the child or youth had experienced a conventional crime in the last ear.
Sexual victimization. Six items that asked about the child or youth’s experience of sexual assault, rape (attempted or ompleted), flashing, and sexual harassment were combined into a single measure indicating whether or not the child or outh had experienced any sexual victimization in the past year.
Bullying perpetration. To measure peer aggression, we asked two questions that were aggregated into a single measure. he questions were: “In the last year did (you or your child) (1) pick on another kid by chasing or grabbing him or her by aking him or her do something he or she didn’t want to do? Or (2) try to scare or make another kid feel bad by calling him
r her names, saying mean things to him or her, or saying (he/she/you) didn’t want him or her around?” Disclosure. Follow up questions to the JVQ asked if a caregiver, an adult at school (teacher, counselor, or other adult), or a
olice officer (or other law enforcement official) knew about the victimization. This could have happened because the child isclosed it or for some other reason such as direct observation by adults. Only children who experienced a specific type f victimization (e.g., peer victimization, conventional crime, or sexual victimization) in the past year were included in the nalyses predicting disclosure of that victimization type. Because caregivers were proxies for children under the age of 10, nalyses on disclosures to parents were only performed on children 10–17. For this paper, disclosures to an adult at school r to police are treated as “known to authorities” and are analyzed separately from disclosures to parents.
ata analysis
The data analysis proceeded in two phases beginning with exploratory analyses of prevention programs generally and xposure to prevention programs by age. We examined bi-variate differences using a Chi-square test for independence. he second phase consisted of multivariate logistic regressions predicting peer/sibling victimization, bullying perpetration,
680 D. Finkelhor et al. / Child Abuse & Neglect 38 (2014) 677–686
Table 1 Descriptive information on exposure to prevention programs (weighted percent).
Program information Ever Past year
Among children 5–17 years old (N = 3,389) Any program 65 55 Program topic
Bullying 55 45 Violence avoidance 43 35 Sexual assault 21 17 Avoiding gangs 27 21
Among children 12–17 years old (N = 1,820)
Dating violence 32 25
Note. N’s are unweighted and percentages are weighted.
disclosure to parents about peer victimization, and disclosure to authorities about peer victimization and conventional crime. All multivariate analyses controlled for age, race, gender, SES, family structure, geographical location, witnessing/indirect victimizations occurring at home, in the community, and at school.
Data analysis weighting
The weighting plan for the survey was a multistage sequential process of weighting the sample to correct for study design and demographic variations in nonresponse. Specifically, weights were applied to adjust for (a) differing probabilities of household selection based on sampling frames; (b) variations in within-household selection resulting from different numbers of eligible children across households; and (c) differences in sample proportions according to gender, age, race/ethnicity, income, census region, number of adults and children in household, and phone status (cell only, mostly cell, other) relative to the 2010 American Community Survey Public Use Microdata Sample.
Results
Sixty-five percent of the school age children (5–17) had ever been exposed to a violence prevention program, 55% in the past year (Table 1). Bullying was the most frequent of the five most common topics of such programs, with 55% of children and youth having experienced a bullying prevention program. Twenty-one percent had been exposed to sexual assault prevention programming. About a third had been exposed to dating violence prevention.
Based on information from children’s most recent program exposure (Table 2), a majority of the programs (59%) involved single day, not multi-day curricula. Most (72%) gave youngsters information to take home and 64% of children discussed the program with parents. However, only 40% gave children the opportunity to practice skills, and only 18% invited parents to come in for a meeting about the program. Large percentages of the programs covered healthy and respectful relationships, warning signs for dangerous situations, and ways of resolving conflict. The most widespread content was the exhortation to tell an adult (88%).
We ranked program quality on the basis of four criteria considered important to prevention education including multi- day presentations, practice opportunities, information to take home, and meeting for parents. Twenty five percent of respondents who were exposed to programming described programs that included three out of four quality compo- nents, meaning that 15.7% of the total sample of children ages five and older reported being exposed to a high quality program.
Most respondents rated the programs as very (39%) or somewhat (32%) helpful (Table 2). Most said there was at least some new information in the program. Over a third (37%) of program exposed children said they could think of a time they decided to tell an adult something “because of what they learned in the program”. Close to half (45%) could think of a time they used program information to help themselves or a friend. The higher quality programs were rated as more helpful and were more often used to help themselves or a friend. Results showing differences in ratings of helpfulness and amount of information gained for high quality programs relative to low quality are not shown.
There were some developmental differences in exposure to prevention programming. Fewer 5–9 year olds than older children were exposed to programs, and that was particularly true for sexual victimization content (Table 3 and Fig. 1). Exposure to bullying programs and violence avoidance and gang programs, tended to peak around age 13, but sexual assault content exposure continued to increase for older adolescents. Youth ages 15–17 were exposed to fewer higher quality programs and were less likely to: discuss their program at home, describe the program as very helpful, say there was new information, tell an adult as a result of the program, or say that the information helped them in some situa-
tion.
We ran multivariate analyses to ascertain whether lifetime program exposure was associated with any reduction of victimization or aggression in the past year and whether it increased the likelihood of disclosure. Because exposure to prevention programs was more common for youth exposed to more violence and because program exposure may create
D. Finkelhor et al. / Child Abuse & Neglect 38 (2014) 677–686 681
Table 2 Content and detail of most recent program.
Program content and details Weighted % (N = 2,320)
High quality programa top 25th percentile 25 Length of program
One day 59 Few days 17 Few weeks 13 Once a month 10
Give information to take home 72 Child discussed program at home 64 Practice role play 40 Parents come in for a meeting 18 Healthy and respectful relationships 73 Warning signs of dangerous situations 78 Conflict resolution/peer mediation 71 Good touch/bad touch 57 Tell an adult if child had a problem 88 Respondent reaction to most recent program Helpfulness of program
Very 39 Somewhat 32 A little 21 Not helpful 9
New information learned No new 13 A little new 48 Most new 27 All new information 12
Told an adult something 37 Helped self or friend
Self 7 Friend 16
s a t o o
Both, self and friend 22 No 55
a Take home info, parent meeting, role play, and >one day.
ensitization effects to identifying violence, we controlled for children’s reports of witnessing/indirect victimization in
ddition to other environmental risk factors. We reasoned that witnessing and indirect exposure to victimization would help o control for the level of exposure to violence in the environment and perhaps also respondents’ sensitivity to perceptions f violence. Because of the cross sectional design of the study, however, we could not insure that all past-year victimizations ccurred after program exposure.
0
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30
40
50
60
70
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90
5 6 7 8 17161514131211109
Pe rc
en t
Age group
Any preven�on
Bullying
Violence avoidance
Sexual assault
Avoiding gangs
Da�ng violence
Fig. 1. Percent of youth in each age group exposed to prevention programs.
682 D. Finkelhor et al. / Child Abuse & Neglect 38 (2014) 677–686
Table 3 Prevention programs by age group (weighted percentages).
Program Age group
Ever Past year
5–9 10–14 15–17 5–9 10–14 15–17
Among children ages 5–17 (N = 3,389) Any program*** 47 74 77 45 64 55
Bullying*** 39 64 64 38 53 43 Violence avoidance*** 29 52 50 28 44 34 Sexual assault*** 9 25 34 7 20 26 Avoiding gangs*** 14 36 31 13 29 21
Among children ages 12–17 (N = 1,820) Dating violence a 29 33 25 25
Percent receiving content or having reactiona,b (N = 2,320) High quality program* 24 28 19 Child discussed program at home*** 82 60 51 Parents come in for a meeting*** 23 19 11 Healthy and respectful relationships* 75 69 77 Warning signs of dangerous situations** 74 77 84 Conflict resolution/peer mediation** 63 71 80 Respondent reaction to most recent program Helpfulness of program**
Very 41 43 30 Somewhat 30 29 36 A little 19 21 22 Not helpful 10 7 12
New information learned***
No new 9 10 21 A little new 46 47 51 Most new 27 30 24 All new information 18 13 5
Told an adult something*** 41 41 25 Helped self or friend***
Self 10 6 3 Friend 9 19 18 Both, self and friend 21 25 20 No 60 50 59
a Only the prevention program characteristics that are significantly associated with age are presented in the second half of this table. b Among children 5–17 years old. * p < .05.
** p < .10. *** p < .001.
Table 4 Victimization, perpetration and disclosure outcomes associated with high quality prevention (odds Ratios-[CI]).a
Peer/sibling victimization
Bullying perpetration
Disclosure to parent about peer victimizationd
Disclosure to authority about peer victimization
Disclosure to authority about conventional crime
Ages 5–9b 2.4*** [1.8–3.2] 1.9** [1.2–3.1] 2.1** [1.3–3.3] 1.4 [.8–2.2] Ages 10–14 1.9*** [1.4–2.4] .9 [.6–1.3] 1.2 [.8–1.8] 1.2 [.8–1.7] .8 [.5–1.1] High quality program 1.2 [.8–1.6] 1.3 [.8–2.1] 1.9* [1.2–3.3] 1.5* [1.0–2.3] 1.8** [1.2–2.7] Ages 5-9c × high quality program .5* [.3–.9] .4† [.2–1.0]
R2 .065 .053 .039 .038 .049
a Odds ratios are adjusted controlling for race, gender, SES, family structure, geographical location, general level of violence in community, neighborhood, school, and within the family.
b Age 15–17 is the reference category c Age 10–17 and low quality/no prevention program are the reference categories d Among10–17 year olds only. * p < .05.
** p < .01. *** p < .001 † p < 0.1.
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D. Finkelhor et al. / Child Abuse & Neglect 38 (2014) 677–686 683
Only analyses with significant or near significant effects for program exposure (5 out of 8) are shown in Table 4. Young hildren (5–9) who were exposed to higher quality prevention programs at some point in their lifetime did experience reduced rate of peer victimization in the past year, consistent with the idea that program exposure can reduce peer
ictimization, but this finding is also vulnerable to other explanations because of the cross-sectional design. There were no ignificant associations for older children (10–14 or 15–17), for programs in general (as opposed to higher quality programs), r for reductions in other kinds of victimization like sexual victimization or conventional crime (analyses not shown). The attern for peer and sibling victimization was echoed in a similar finding about bullying perpetration, which, although nly significant at the <.10 level and possibly due to chance, is worthy of mention in connection to the parallel finding on ictimization. In both cases, higher quality prevention programs were associated with reductions among younger children ut not among older children (10–14 or 15–17).
Higher quality programs were also associated with increased reporting to parents and authorities (Table 4). Older children 10–17) with higher quality programs were more likely to report peer victimization to parents. The effect, however, did not pply to conventional crime or sexual victimization (not shown). Children across the age spectrum (5–17) with higher quality rograms were more likely to have their episode known to authorities (including school officials and police) and this applied o both peer victimization and conventional crime, but not sexual victimization.
iscussion
A majority of school age children in this national sample from 2011 had been exposed to a violence prevention program, ncluding three-quarters of youth 10–17 years old. A majority rated their most recent program as helpful. Substantial per- entages said they had told an adult about something (37%) as a result of the program or that they used program information o help themselves or a friend (45%).
The survey identified serious gaps in the prevention education landscape. Fir