School Environment as a Mechanism to Reduce Youth Violence and Victimization

描述（由申请人提供）：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岁人群死亡的第二大原因。每年有72万多名青年因与暴力有关的伤害在急诊室接受治疗（疾病预防控制中心，2008年a）。这些危害在少数民族青年中尤为严重。改善学校环境可以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，是与青年暴力流行有关的地方环境的更大结构特征的一部分。考虑到大多数人在上学期间开始暴力行为，学校提供了一个自然的联系，考虑如何促进个人内部的亲社会变化，从而减少暴力的流行。在家庭之外，学校是最重要的社会控制机构。即使将当地社区和家庭因素考虑在内，在管理不善和资源匮乏的学校就读的青少年更有可能遭受暴力。在一天中最容易发生犯罪的时间，青少年集中在学校场地上或周围，这表明学校是自然生态环境，可以产生暴力。本研究将透过分析学校对青少年暴力行为的中介保护作用，扩展我们对青少年暴力流行病学的认识。我们的理论是，改善学校环境是减少青少年暴力和受害总比率的重要中介因素。据推测，改善学校环境还可以促进与青年暴力有关的社区系统方面的变化（例如，混乱、社会凝聚力、集体效能）。由于缺乏实验证据，我们依靠自然实验来产生学校环境中的外生变化，并评估其在多个层面（包括州、地区和学校）对青少年暴力的影响。这种方法通常用于估计对学业成绩的因果影响，但尚未广泛应用于青少年暴力结果。我们的方法依赖于州内、地区内和学校内的变化，通过固定效应回归，并在相关的情况下，使用工具变量和倾向得分方法来估计对青少年暴力的影响。我们还将按种族/民族分列我们的估计。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。通过对学区、执法部门和公共卫生部门收集的青少年暴力和受害结果的监测数据进行分析，我们可以对学校对社区青少年暴力的影响进行流行病学评估。该项目旨在实现《2010年健康人》的目标，重点领域是预防伤害和暴力。青年暴力给个人和社会造成巨大代价，其危害在少数群体中尤为严重。本研究将透过分析学校在减少青少年暴力伤害中所扮演的保护性中介角色，扩展我们对青少年暴力流行病学的了解。该项目旨在实现《2010年健康人》的目标，重点领域是预防伤害和暴力，国家卫生研究院呼吁对健康方面的种族/族裔差异进行研究。

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.