Citation

Jain S, Buka SL, Subramanian SV, Molnar BE. Am. J. Public Health 2010; 100(9): 1737-1744.

Affiliation

Health and Human Development Program, WestEd.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, American Public Health Association)

DOI

10.2105/AJPH.2009.169730

PMID

20634470

Abstract

Objectives. We examined whether social processes of neighborhoods, such as collective efficacy, during adolescent years affect the likelihood of being involved in physical dating violence during young adulthood. Methods. Using longitudinal data on 633 urban youths aged 13 to 19 years at baseline and data from their neighborhoods (collected by the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods), we ran multilevel linear regression models separately by gender to assess the association between collective efficacy and physical dating violence victimization and perpetration, controlling for individual covariates, neighborhood poverty, and perceived violence. Results. Females were significantly more likely than were males to be perpetrators of dating violence during young adulthood (38% vs 19%). Multilevel analyses revealed some variation in dating violence at the neighborhood level, partly accounted for by collective efficacy. Collective efficacy was predictive of victimization for males but not females after control for confounders; it was marginally associated with perpetration (P=.07). The effects of collective efficacy varied by neighborhood poverty. Finally, a significant proportion of the variation in male perpetration was at the neighborhood level (intraclass correlation=14%-21%).Conclusions. Community-level strategies may be useful in preventing dating violence.

Language: en