Poster #168 - Exploring the social context of community violence exposure in Chicago and adolescent psychological functioning

• In Event: 3-206 - Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Section - Race, Ethnicity, Culture, Context

Integrative Statement

Introduction: Violence is a prevalent problem in Chicago, where an average of 72 violent crimes occur in public school neighborhoods annually (Burdick-Will, 2016). A robust body of research has explored how community violence exposure (CVE) hinders youth psychological functioning and outcomes (Fowler et al., 2009; McDonald & Richmond, 2008), yet little research has used an objective measure of CVE to explore the social context.
Sample: This study utilizes an objective measure of CVE to explore how neighborhood-based CVE matters psychologically in a sample of low-income, racial/ethnic minority adolescents in Chicago (see Table 1 for sample demographics). Youth were originally recruited into an early childhood, socioemotional intervention in 2004-2005 and have been followed longitudinally to date.
Methods/Measurement: CVE is measured with publicly available violent crime data and is geocoded and aggregated in terms of distance and timeframes within relevant neighborhood spaces, specifically youths’ home and school locations, to explore how violence occurring in the neighborhood impacts adolescents psychologically. This study posits that indirect CVE will have negative implications on youth functioning, beyond other important factors such as direct violence exposure and poverty. The social context of CVE is explored by aggregating violent crime in terms of three distinct domains, specifically chronicity (timeframes of 1 year, 6 months, and 1 week before psychological assessment), pervasiveness (exploring the home and school neighborhoods), and spatial proximity (1 city block, 2 city blocks, and 1 census tract encompassing home and school addresses). The result of these calculations enables the analyses to explore precisely where and when CVE impacts a range of youth psychological functioning, specifically self-report cognitive and behavioral dysregulation. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses explored how each domain of CVE relate to psychological dysregulation while controlling for several covariates, including sample and study characteristics, direct violence exposure, family and neighborhood poverty.
Results: Preliminary analyses revealed that CVE has unique, domain specific implications on behavioral dysfunction but not cognitive dysfunction (see Table 2). CVE aggregated at a 1 year, 2 block radius of both home and school addresses is associated with increased behavioral dysregulation, B = .012, p < .05 (see model 7). This infers that when CVE is most chronic (occurring frequently over the previous year), youth exhibit more behavioral dysregulation. Regarding pervasiveness, there were nearly significant, context-dependent results revealing that school neighborhoods exert stronger negative associations with behavioral dysregulation, B = .005, p = .056 (see model 10). Finally, the most distal spatial boundary, home and school census tracts, was almost significantly associated with behavioral dysregulation, B = .009, p = .077 (see model 12). This could be explained by the fact that adolescents have increased autonomy, therefore they may be more likely to explore their home and school neighborhoods, rather than remain proximal to the home or school.
Conclusion: The results reveal that CVE does matter psychologically, even beyond direct violence exposure. Given the amount of youth living in high violent crime, particularly urban neighborhoods, these findings infer that intervention and prevention strategies are critical to support healthy psychological functioning.

Authors

• Andrea DaViera, University of Illinois, Chicago
  Presenting Author

• Amanda L Roy, University of Illinois, Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author