Exposure to Community Violence Among Low-Income African American Youth in Chicago: A Latent Class Analysis.

Abstract

African American youth are exposed to some of the highest rates of exposure to community violence. However, few studies have explored factors related to exposures and various subtypes of exposures to community violence (i.e., no exposure, witnessing only and being a witness/victim). Among a matched sample of 129 African American youth and their caregivers, no exposure to community violence was correlated with being heterosexual versus being a lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) person, having parents who owned their homes versus rented, and having higher authoritarian parenting attitudes. In addition, being a witness/victim of community violence was correlated with any youth substance use, lower levels of school bonding, having less future orientation, less parental home ownership, and an adverse family history. Practice and programmatic considerations are discussed based on these findings.