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Adolescents' exposure to community violence: are neighborhood youth organizations protective?
Author(s) -
Gardner Margo,
BrooksGunn Jeanne
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
journal of community psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.585
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 1520-6629
pISSN - 0090-4392
DOI - 10.1002/jcop.20310
Subject(s) - variety (cybernetics) , association (psychology) , psychology , community organization , positive youth development , human factors and ergonomics , poison control , criminology , environmental health , developmental psychology , political science , public relations , medicine , artificial intelligence , computer science , psychotherapist
Using data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN), we identified a significant inverse association between the variety of youth organizations available at the neighborhood level and adolescents' exposure to community violence. We examined two non‐competing explanations for this finding. First, at the individual level, we tested the hypothesis that access to a greater variety of neighborhood youth organizations predicts adolescents' participation in organized community‐based activities, which, in turn, protects against community violence exposure. Second, at the neighborhood level, we tested the hypothesis that lower violent crime rates explain the inverse relation between neighborhood youth organization variety and community violence exposure. Our findings supported the latter of these two mechanisms. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.