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Children Who Witness Violence, and Parent Report of Children's Behavior
Marilyn Augustyn, MD;
Deborah A. Frank, MD;
Michael Posner, MS;
Barry Zuckerman, MD
Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2002;156:800-803.
Objectives To examine how much distress children report in response to violence
that they have witnessed and how this is associated with parental reports
of children's behavior.
Methods As part of a study of in utero exposure to cocaine, children completed
the Levonn interview for assessing children's symptoms of distress in response
to witnessing violence. The children's caregivers completed the Exposure to
Violence Interview (EVI), a caretaker-report measure of the child's exposure
to violent events during the last 12 months. The EVI was analyzed as a 3-level
variable: no exposure, low exposure, and high exposure. The caregivers also
completed the Children's Behavior Checklist (CBCL).
Results Of 94 six-year-old children, 58% had no exposure to violence, 36% had
low exposure to violence, and 6% had high exposure to violence, according
to caretaker reports. The children's median±SD Levonn score was 64
(SD ± 19.3). The mean SD ± CBCL total T-score was 53 (SD ±
10.2). In multiple regression analyses with gender, low and high exposure
on EVI, Levonn, and prenatal cocaine exposure status as predictors, the Levonn
score explained 4.8% of total variance in children's CBCL internalizing scores,
9.1% of the total variance in CBCL externalizing score, and 12.2% of the total
variance in CBCL total score (P = .04, P = .004, and P<.001, respectively).
Conclusions After accounting for the caretaker's report of the level of the child's
exposure to violence, the child's own report significantly increased the amount
of variance in predicting child behavior problems with the CBCL. These findings
indicate that clinicians and researchers should elicit children's own accounts
of exposure to violence in addition to the caretakers' when attempting to
understand children's behavior.
From the Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, Mass.
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