Modifying Violent Communities by Enhancing Altruism: A Vision of Possibilities

A model for diagnosing and treating violent communities is outlined. The treatment consists of enhancing a form of pragmatic altruism by building relationships and mutual understanding between community leaders who are derived from task groups called community stabilizing systems, defined as groups essential for peaceful, creative stability in a community. Two examples of an intervention derived from this theory are described.     

Development and Validation of the Screen for Adolescent Violence Exposure (SAVE)

Empirical evidence was provided on the utility of the Screen for Adolescent Violence Exposure (SAVE) in assessing adolescent exposure to school, home, and community violence. The SAVE was empirically developed on 1,250 inner-city adolescents, and obtained excellent reliability and validity. Both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses identified three factors: Traumatic Violence, Indirect Violence, and Physical/Verbal Abuse. The SAVE demonstrated utility in classifying high- and low-violence participants, and correlated significantly with both objective crime data and theoretically relevant constructs (anger, posttraumatic stress symptoms, and internalizing/externalizing problems). Thus, the SAVE provides measurement of the stressor criterion associated with posttraumatic stress disorder, and allows quantification of severity of violence exposure by setting.     

Effects of Intimate Partner Violence on Low-Income Women’s Health and Employment

Rates of both intimate partner violence and poor health are high among low-income women This paper examines relationships among abuse, health, and employment stability using data from a 3-year study of over 1000 female welfare recipients in Illinois. Results demonstrate the importance of accounting for both recency and chronicity of intimate partner violence and understanding the mediational role of health in the relationship between intimate partner violence and employment. Chronic intimate partner violence is associated with poor health, whereas recent intimate partner violence is associated with unstable employment. Mediations analyses suggest that health does not mediate the effects of abuse on employment stability over a 3-year period.     

Children Exposed to Community Violence: The Rationale for Early Intervention

Children are exposed to violence in their homes and communities at extraordinarily high rates. Given the alarming rates of exposure and its known impact on child developmental outcomes, crisis intervention geared at interrupting the negative effects of violence exposure are increasingly important. This review provides a rationale for the implementation of early and crisis intervention strategies for children exposed to community violence and recommends principles for applying these interventions. These principles are based on the body of research concerning risk and protective factors for children who have been exposed to violence. Relevant factors are reviewed and recommended principles are explicated that correlate to these factors. Issues concerning developmentally informed crisis intervention, support of parental executive functioning, and the need for active community partnership to help ameliorate risk factors are highlighted.     

Community Violence as It Affects Child Development: Issues of Definition

The state of the art of definition of community violence as it relates to child development was examined in terms of the definitions used in 23 empirical studies. In all cases community violence was defined in terms of what were assumed to be measurements obtained as linear combinations of a priori numerical weighting of responses to questions--asked either of a child or of the parent of a child--about experiencing and/or witnessing and/or hearing about instances of violence. Thus, the definitions can be seen to represent the perspectives of 2 kinds of observers--the child or the child's parent--and 3 levels of closeness to violence--experiencing, witnessing, or hearing about violence. Combining these perspectives and levels, the following 8 different definitions could be seen to be used in the practice of 1 or more of the 23 empirical studies: Child Self-Report (perception) of either (1) experiencing, or (2) witnessing, or (3) experiencing and witnessing, and hearing about violence; or Parent Report (perception) of the Child (4) experiencing, or (5) witnessing, or (6) experiencing and witnessing and hearing about violence, or (7) = (1) + (4), or (8) = (3) + (6). In almost all the examples of research definitions it was assumed implicitly and without test of the assumption that different violent events were interchangeable, and usually it was assumed (again without test) that the magnitudes of different violence events were equal. Usually, an unstated theory of stress appeared to guide the measurement definition, but in one study definitions were developed and tested in terms of a clearly-stated theory of learning. It was concluded that definition of community violence is a measurement problem; that very likely it is multidimensional; that it could be more nearly solved if better attention were given to specifying it in terms of theory that can be put to test and by attending to basic assumptions and principles of measurement.     

Relationships between Past Trauma Exposures and PTSD among Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence

This study examined child abuse and community violence exposure as potential risk factors in the development of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms following exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV). In a community sample of 51 primarily low-income women who had experienced IPV, childhood exposure to child abuse made a unique contribution to PTSD symptom severity from subsequent IPV. Community violence also accounted for variance in PTSD symptom severity, but in the opposite direction, with individuals exposed to community violence reporting lower levels of PTSD symptoms from IPV. These findings suggest the need for further research to identify which factors related to community violence exposure might inoculate individuals against the development of PTSD following IPV exposure.     

Neighborhood Characteristics and Depression: An Examination of Stress Processes

ABSTRACT— Neighborhoods with poor-quality housing, few resources, and unsafe conditions impose stress, which can lead to depression. The stress imposed by adverse neighborhoods increases depression above and beyond the effects of the individual's own personal stressors, such as poverty and negative events within the family or workplace. Furthermore, adverse neighborhoods appear to intensify the harmful impact of personal stressors and interfere with the formation of bonds between people, again increasing risk for depression. Neighborhoods do not affect all people in the same way. People with different personality characteristics adjust in different ways to challenging neighborhoods. As a field, psychology should pay more attention to the impact of contextual factors such as neighborhoods. Neighborhood-level mental health problems should be addressed at the neighborhood level. Public housing policies that contribute to the concentration of poverty should be avoided and research should be conducted on the most effective ways to mobilize neighborhood residents to meet common goals and improve the context in which they live.     

Evaluation of the Dispositional Hope Scale in injury survivors

Hope is a higher-order cognitive construct that encompasses the belief in one’s ability to accomplish personal goals. Hope has been conceptualised as consisting of two constructs – Pathways (the individual’s perceived means available to achieve goals) and Agency (belief in ones ability to succeed in using the identified Pathways). This study aimed to validate a measure of hope, the Dispositional Hope Scale (DHS: [Snyder, C. R., Harris, C., Anderson, J. R., Holleran, S. A., Irving, L. M., Sigman, S. T., et al. (1991). The will and the ways: Development and validation of an individual differences measure of hope. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60(4), 570–585]) in a large sample of traumatic injury survivors (N = 1025). The findings support the psychometric properties of the scale, as well as the two-factor structure of Agency and Pathways, in this population. This study provides support for the use of the DHS as a measure of hope in traumatised populations.     

Next Steps in Research on Children Exposed to Community Violence or War/Terrorism

The articles in this special issue of Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review provide an overview of what is known about children's exposure to community violence and war/ terrorism, and indicate significant gaps in extant research. These gaps and research needs are summarized in this conclusion.     

Children Exposed to Community Violence or War/Terrorism: Current Status and Research Directions—Introduction

This issue of Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, Children Exposed to Community Violence or War/Terrorism: Current Status and Research Directions, addresses the current status of our knowledge as well as critical research needs in the area of children exposed to violence outside the family. Although much has been learned in recent years about children exposed to violence, significant research gaps remain, the identification of which may help to build a more complete and rigorous science base in this area. This journal issue represents the distillation of a 3-day workshop on children exposed to violence, held in July of 2002, that identified what is known about children exposed to violence and what this information tells us about future research directions. Although many federal agencies have supported some research in this area, there is a need for more targeted attention on the topic, particularly with regard to measurement, sampling, and interventions/services. The papers in this issue were selected with these themes in mind. Although no single issue could cover the entire field, we intend to offer a representative sample of where we are and where we need to go with the hope of stimulating additional thought, collaboration, and research in this important area.