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Exposure to Community Violence and Adolescents’ Internalizing Behaviors Among African American and Asian American Adolescents

  • Empirical Research
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Abstract

Exposure to community violence can seriously threaten healthy adolescent development. This longitudinal study examines the relationship between exposure to violence in the community and the internalizing behaviors of Asian American and African American adolescents. Data analyzed was from 901 adolescents (57.9% female and 42.1% male, and 84.7% African American and 15.3% Asian American) who had participated in both Wave I and II interviews of the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health conducted between 1994 and 1996. Being female, having prior internalizing behaviors at baseline, and being exposed to violence significantly predicted African American adolescents’ subsequent report of internalizing behaviors and their symptoms. Being female and having prior internalizing behaviors also predicted Asian American adolescents’ subsequent internalizing behaviors and their symptoms. However, exposure to violence was not associated with Asian American adolescents’ internalizing behaviors. Findings suggested a need to conceptualize mental health risk in a more nuanced context of cultural diversity.

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Notes

  1. Add health survey asked adolescents to identify their Asian background in the following categories: Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Asian Indian, Korean, Vietnamese, and others.

  2. Examples of such measures are Violence Screen Survey (Bell and Jenkins 1993), Children’s Report of Exposure to Violence (Cooley et al. 1995), Recent Exposure to Physical Violence (Singer et al. 1995), Children’s Interview on Community Violence (Hill et al. 1996), Determining Our Viewpoints for Violent Events (DOVVE; Sheehan et al. 1997), Screen for Adolescent Exposure to violence (SAVE; Hastings and Kelley 1997), Exposure to Violence Subscale of Chicago Stress and Coping Interview (Gorman-Smith and Tolan 1998), and My Exposure to Violence (My ETV; Brennan et al. 2007; Selner-O’Hagan et al. 1998).

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Acknowledgments

This research uses data from Add Health, a program project designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris, and funded by a grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 17 other agencies. Special acknowledgment is due Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Persons interested in obtaining data files from Add Health should contact Add Health, Carolina Population Center, 123W. Franklin Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27516-2524 (addhealth@unc.edu). No direct support was received from grant P01-HD31921 for this analysis.

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  1. College of Human Ecology, School of Social Work, Syracuse University, Sims Hall, 123 College Place, Syracuse, NY, 13244-1230, USA

    Wan-Yi Chen

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Chen, WY. Exposure to Community Violence and Adolescents’ Internalizing Behaviors Among African American and Asian American Adolescents. J Youth Adolescence 39, 403–413 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-009-9427-7

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