Associations Between Youth Violence and Exposure to Gun Violence
The issue of violence in school has drawn increasing attention in recent years. Thus, the study by Forster (et al., 2015) entitled “Associations Between Gun Violence Exposure, Gang Associations, and Youth Aggression: Implications for Prevention and Intervention Programs,” appears to be a timely one, regarding the association of exposure to gun violence to aggressive actions. According to the authors, there is abundant literature showing a significant association between being victims and perpetrators of violence and gang affiliation for members of socio-economically disadvantaged youths from historically discriminated-against ethnicities. But the reasons for this remain difficult to pinpoint. There is a constellation of factors, according to the authors that give rise to this tendency.
One rational for the association is offered by by social modeling theory, arguing that by emulating family members, peers, and also the family provided by gangs, negative and aggressive behaviors are fostered. On a biological level, chronic stress may give rise to a likelihood of demonstrating greater aggression. There is also an interesting trend noting that girls have shown an increasingly greater likelihood of demonstrating aggressive behavior than they have in the past, although boys are still, statistically...
While boys’ aggressive behaviors are associated more with the goal of peer intimidation, girls’ violence was more apt to be associated with trauma or previous victimization.
The goal of the research was to determine the extent to which gun violence exposure in particular resulted in youth aggression. The study population was of 179 students from three low-income schools in the Los Angeles, California region. The area was predominantly African-American and Latino, and a relatively balanced ratio of males and females was used (87 male and 77 female students). For the purposes of the study, a variety of demographic factors associated with violence were subject to scrutiny, including, social associations, self-control, aggression, and neighborhood violence. All data was self-reported. This was one limitation of the study. The authors concluded: “The direct association between witnessing gun violence and past week aggression, when controlling for peer and family factors, suggests that firsthand gun violence exposure may have a unique, independent influence on an adolescent’s externalizing behaviors” (Forster, et al., 2015, par.27). However, the study also encompassed a number of additional associative factors within its framework of study, as the authors noted that…
