This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Karen Sheehan, MD, MPH; Joseph A. DiCara, MD, MPH; Susan LeBailly, PhD; Katherine Kaufer Christoffel, MD, MPH

Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 1997;151(5):502-504.

Abstract
Objective
To assess the exposure to violence of a representative sample of children living in an inner-city public housing development.

Design
Self-report survey.

Setting
Chicago public housing development that covers 4 census tracts; population, 95% African American, 75% below the poverty level.

Participants
One hundred forty-six African American youth, aged 7 through 13 years, completed the survey; 53% were male; mean and median ages, 11 years. Seventy-two children (case subjects) are involved in a community-based health and recreation program. They completed the survey prior to participating in a peer-mentoring violence prevention curriculum. The other 74 children (control subjects) were recruited by a community member going door to door. Control subjects were matched to case subjects for age, sex, and census tract.

Results
The case and control subjects were similar in their exposure to violence and so were grouped for analysis. Of the 146 children, 42% had seen someone shot and 37% had seen someone stabbed; 21% lived with someone who had been shot and 16% lived with someone who had been stabbed. Forty-seven percent of the girls and 55% of the boys had witnessed violence (P>.25). Almost all subjects (90%) felt safe at home. Two thirds (65%) of the children were not afraid to play outside, but almost half (43%) worried about getting hurt at school.

Conclusions
These data, which describe a representative sample of children from an inner-city housing project, confirm the results from older clinic- and school-based convenience samples. In this low-income community, children are frequently exposed to deadly violence. In contrast with other reports, girls here are not spared.

Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 1997;151:502-504

Author Affiliations
From the Divisions of General Academic Pediatrics (Drs Sheehan and Kaufer Christoffel), Pediatric Emergency Medicine (Dr Sheehan), and General Medicine (Dr DiCara), and the Statistical Science and Epidemiology Program (Dr LeBailly), Children's Memorial Hospital, Northwestern University Medical School, Chicago, Ill.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

Community Violence and Asthma Morbidity: The Inner-City Asthma Study
Wright et al.
AJPH 2004;94:625-632.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Urban Children's Perceptions of Violence
Sheehan et al.
Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med 2004;158:74-77.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Caretaker-Child Concordance for Child's Exposure to Violence in a Preadolescent Inner-City Population
Thomson et al.
Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med 2002;156:818-823.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Witnessing Violence Among Inner-city Children of Substance-Abusing and Non-Substance-Abusing Women
Schuler and Nair
Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med 2001;155:342-346.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Coming Up in the Boogie Down: The Role of Violence in the Lives of Adolescents in the South Bronx
Freudenberg et al.
Health Educ Behav 1999;26:788-805.
ABSTRACT