This research will increase scientific understanding of the social processes, conduct norms and behavioral patterns associated with aggression and violence, and risk behaviors for HIV to co-occur. Key findings from years 1-2 document the many """"""""informal rules"""""""" (conduct norms) governing drug abuse and sales, aggression and violence, and HIV risk behaviors within African-American """"""""severely distressed households."""""""" The proposed study will provide more accurate conceptual and empirical understandings of the conduct norms and severity of aggression and violence within inner-city African-American families when one or more members participate in crack and other drug consumption and sales.
The specific aims are to: 1. delineate the importance of aggressive languaging as a form of near violence and document how and under what circumstances such languaging is sometimes transformed into physical violence; 2. identify and document commonplace varieties of aggression and violence and specific episodes that co-occur with drug use/abuse/sale and risk for HIV/AIDS in specific kinds of households; 3. document the intergenerational processes by which co-occurring violence, drug abuse, and HIV risk behavior is learned, modeled, and practiced by one generation against other generations. The omnibus longitudinal ethnographic methodology will systematically document the complex realities of these households. A total of 30 households (15 from Years 1-2 and 15 new comparison households) and all household members (adults, children, relatives, sexual partners, and transients) (about 200 subjects) will be recruited and repeatedly studied. Each subject will complete a quarterly in-depth interview and be directly observed by the ethnographer on a monthly or more regular basis during the five year period. Planned analyses will document specific conduct norms and social processes by which drugs, violence, and HIV risk behaviors co-occur and are transmitted over generations.
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