The goals of the proposed research are; 1) to establish the differential incidence and prevalence of experience with chronic community violence in an inner-city population of adolescents; 2) to describe the psychological trauma, behavioral and physical illness sequelae of this experience with chronic community violence; and 3) to discover psychosocial factors that may mitigate these consequences by either a) reducing athe likelihood of exposure to violence, or b) buffering and modulating the impact of such exposure. The research will use self-report survey-style procedures for collecting data from a moderate sized (approximately 1,600 over a four year period), socially heterogeneous, conveniently available, sample of older adolescents in New York City. Measurements of host exposure, consequent and moderating variables will be made using multi-item additive scales which reflect underlying latent variables. These scales will have face- content validity for reflecting the latent variables, and internal consistency reliabilities (Chronbach's alpha) in the neighborhood of .80. The research will use primarily multivariate correlational research design to test hypotheses; and will employ relatively conventional multivariable statistical techniques found in SPSS. The general hypotheses to be tested are; 1) exposure to chronic community violence is widespread among inner- city adolescents; 2) the degree of exposure is a function of socio- demographic characteristics; 3) inner-city adolescents have a relatively high level of psychological trauma symptoms; 4) the level of psychological trauma symptoms is a curvilinear function of the level of exposure to violence; 5) the level of exposure to violence is negatively related to selected behavioral variables, namely, performance in school and persistence in school; 6) the level of physical illness symptoms is positively related to the level of exposure to violence; and 7) certain """"""""resiliency"""""""" or """"""""protective"""""""" factors, such as having a sympathetic adult friend or feeling in control of life's experiences, have a moderating effect on the impact of exposure to chronic community violence.
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