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Connection Between Adolescent’s Exposure to Community Violence and Future Civic Engagement Behaviors During Their Young Adulthood

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Abstract

With a sample of 10,298 individuals who participated in three waves of interviews from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health conducted between 1994 and 2002, this study examines how exposure to community violence during adolescence could affect individual’s subsequent engagement in civic activities during their young adulthood. Exposure to violence in the community during adolescence decreased the likelihood for a young adult to participate in volunteering for community services. A positive parent–child relationship would promote the likelihood for individual’s civic engagement during young adulthood but there was no significant buffering effect from such relationship against the negative influence from violence exposure on young adults’ civic engagement. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.

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Acknowledgments

This research uses data from Add Health, a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and funded by Grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations. Special acknowledgment is due Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Information on how to obtain the Add Health data files is available on the Add Health website (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth). No direct support was received from Grant P01-HD31921 for this analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate Social Work Department, West Chester University, Reynolds Hall, West Chester, PA, 19383, USA

    Wan-Yi Chen

  2. Social Work Department, Westfield State University, 577 Western Avenue, Westfield, MA, 01086, USA

    Jennifer Propp

  3. Department of Social Work, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Heritage Hall, Birmingham, AL, 35233, USA

    Yookyong Lee

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  1. Wan-Yi Chen
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  2. Jennifer Propp
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  3. Yookyong Lee
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Correspondence to Wan-Yi Chen.

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Chen, WY., Propp, J. & Lee, Y. Connection Between Adolescent’s Exposure to Community Violence and Future Civic Engagement Behaviors During Their Young Adulthood. Child Adolesc Soc Work J 32, 45–55 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10560-014-0361-5

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