School Environment as a Mechanism to Reduce Youth Violence and Victimization

描述(申请人提供)：青少年暴力给个人和社会带来了巨大的代价。青少年暴力是10至24岁青少年死亡的第二大原因。每年有超过720,000名青年因与暴力有关的伤害在急诊室接受治疗(CDC，2008a)。这些伤害在少数族裔青年中尤为严重。改善学校环境可作为一种有效的预防性干预措施，因为它们是青年的环境支柱，是与青年暴力盛行有关的地方环境更大一套结构特征的一部分。鉴于大多数人在上学期间发起暴力行为，学校在考虑如何促进个人内部的亲社会变革并因此减少暴力流行方面提供了一种天然的联系。在家庭之外，学校是最重要的社会控制机构。在管理不善和资源匮乏的学校就读的青年更有可能遭受暴力，即使在考虑到与当地社区和家庭有关的属性之后也是如此。在一天中犯罪最多的时候，年轻人集中在学校操场上/周围，这表明学校是自然的生态环境，暴力可能由此而生。这项拟议的研究将通过分析学校作为中介保护因素的作用，扩大我们对青少年暴力流行病学的理解。我们的理论是，改善学校环境是降低青少年暴力和受害总体比率的一个重要中介因素。据推测，改善学校环境还可以促进与青少年暴力有关的社区不断变化的系统性方面(例如，无序、社会凝聚力、集体效能)。鉴于缺乏实验证据，我们依靠自然实验在学校环境中产生外生变化，并在包括州、区和学校在内的多个层面上评估其对青少年暴力的影响。这种方法通常用于评估学业成绩的因果影响，但尚未广泛应用于青少年暴力结果。我们的方法依赖于通过固定效果回归的州内、地区内和学校内的差异，以及在适当的情况下，工具变量和倾向评分方法来估计对青少年暴力的影响。我们还将按种族/民族对我们的估计进行分类。这项研究将是评估旨在改善学校环境的广泛社会政策努力对州、区和学校各级青少年暴力结果的影响的首批努力之一。通过分析学区、执法和公共卫生部门收集的青少年暴力监测数据和受害结果，可以提供学校对社区青少年暴力影响的流行病学评估。该项目涉及2010年健康人的目标，重点是预防伤害和暴力领域。青年暴力给个人和社会带来巨大代价，其危害在少数群体中尤为严重。拟议的研究将通过分析学校作为减少这些危害的中介保护因素的作用，扩大我们对青少年暴力流行病学的理解。该项目涉及2010年健康人的目标，重点是预防伤害和暴力领域，国家卫生研究院呼吁研究健康方面的种族/族裔差异。

Description (Provided by Applicant): Youth violence imposes enormous costs on individuals and society. Youth violence is the second leading cause of death among individuals ages 10 to 24. Each year, over 720,000 youth are treated in emergency rooms for violence-related injuries (CDC, 2008a). These harms are particularly acute among minority youth. Improving school environments may serve as an effective preventative intervention because they are environmental anchors for youth and are part of the larger set of structural features of local environments linked to the prevalence of youth violence. Given that most individuals initiate violent behaviors during school years, schools provide a natural nexus in considering how to promote pro-social change within individuals and consequently reduce the prevalence of violence. Outside of the family, schools represent the most important institution of social control. Youth attending poorly-managed and resource-deprived schools are more likely to be exposed to violence, even after accounting for local community and family-related attributes. The concentration of youth on/around school grounds during the most crime prone times of the day, suggests that schools are natural ecological environments from which violence can generate. The proposed study will expand our understanding of the epidemiology of youth violence by analyzing the role of the school as a mediating protective factor. We theorize that improving the school environment is an important mediating factor in reducing aggregate rates of youth violence and victimization. Improving school environments can also putatively foster changing systemic aspects of communities linked to youth violence (e.g., disorder, social cohesion, collective efficacy). Given the lack of experimental evidence, we rely on natural experiments to generate exogenous variation in school environments and assess their effects on youth violence at multiple levels including state, districts, and schools. This approach is commonly used to estimate a causal impact on academic achievement, but has not been applied widely to youth violence outcomes. Our methodology relies on within-state, within-district and within- school variation via fixed effects regressions and, where relevant, instrumental variables and propensity score approaches to estimate the effects on youth violence. We will also disaggregate our estimates by race/ethnicity. The study will be among the first efforts to assess the effects of broad-based social policy efforts aimed at improving school environments on youth violence outcomes at state, district, and school levels. Through the analysis of surveillance data on youth violence and victimization outcomes collected by school districts, law enforcement, and public health departments, we can provide an epidemiological assessment of school effects on youth violence in the community. This project addresses the goals of Healthy People 2010 focus areas of Injury and Violence Prevention. Youth violence imposes enormous costs on individuals and society and its harms are particularly acute among minority populations. The proposed study will expand our understanding of the epidemiology of youth violence by analyzing the role of the school as a mediating protective factor in reducing these harms. This project addresses the goals of Healthy People 2010 focus areas of Injury and Violence Prevention and the National Institutes of Health call for research on racial/ethnic disparities in health.