Children that carry weapons to school endanger the lives of their peers. Although much research has accumulated over the past decade in relation to weapon carrying, progress has been slow in understanding the conditions that may exacerbate risk for, and the mechanisms that may explain why some children carry weapons to school. Drawing on findings from two literatures (weapon carrying and peer victimization), recent thinking about how person x environment interactions affect development, and social-cognitive learning theory, a model is developed specifying that the experience of victimization by peers is likely to lead children to carry weapons to school, but primarily when they are also aggressive. These effects, in tum, are expected to be mediated by social-cognitive mechanisms (e.g., self-efficacy, outcome expectations, outcome values) specific to the domain of weapon carrying behavior in the schools. To test this model, approximately 424 primarily Hispanic-American 6th - 8h grade boys and girls will be asked to participate in two additional annual assessments (one wave of data will be collected in May, 2001). Thus, these children will be assessed again in the 7th - 9th grades and again one year later as 8th - 10th grade students. Two years of support are thus requested. This age period was chosen for study because it marks the beginning of a rapid rise in the rate of weapon carrying. Primary analyses will evaluate the proposed model. Secondary analyses will evaluate the generalizability of recent models of antecedent-consequence relations of victimization to minority populations.
| Card, Noel A; Hodges, Ernest V E (2006) Shared targets for aggression by early adolescent friends. Dev Psychol 42:1327-38 |
