Direct Protective Factors Research Articles

Direct Protective and Buffering Protective Factors in the Development of Youth Violence

This article discusses conceptual issues and reviews knowledge about direct and buffering protective factors in the development of youth violence. Direct protective factors predict a low probability of violence, whereas buffering protective factors predict a low probability of violence in the presence of risk (and often interact with risk factors). Individual, family, school, peer, and neighborhood factors are reviewed. Heterogeneity of variables, measurement, contexts, study design, sample, and other characteristics limit generalizations. However, there were various evidence-based candidates for having a direct protective or buffering protective effect such as above-average intelligence, low impulsivity/easy temperament, enhanced anxiety, prosocial attitudes, high heart rate, close relationship to at least one parent, intensive parental supervision, medium SES of the family, sound academic achievement, strong school bonding, a positive school/class climate, nondeviant peers, and living in a nondeprived and nonviolent neighborhood. The probability of violence decreases as the number of protective factors increases (a dose–response relationship). Implications for future research and practice concern adequate research designs to detect nonlinear relationships; conceptually and methodologically homogeneous studies; differentiated analyses with regard to age, gender, and other characteristics; and greater integration of longitudinal correlational research with (quasi-)experimental intervention studies.

Risk and Direct Protective Factors for Youth Violence: Results from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health

The majority of studies on youth violence have focused on factors that increase the risk for youth violence. To assess whether determinants of violence operate as risk factors, direct protective factors, or both during adolescence and young adulthood. Data from participants in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, aged 13 years at Wave 1, were analyzed. Individual, family, school, peer, and community factors during adolescence (Wave 1 [1995]; age 13 years) were examined as predictors of violence involvement during adolescence (Wave 2 [1996]; age 14 years) and in young adulthood (Wave 3 [2001-2002]; ages 18-20 years). Twelve percent of participants aged 14 years and 8% of participants aged 18-20 years reported serious violence involvement during the past 12 months. Bivariate analyses revealed risk and direct protective factors for violence at both time points. Risk for violence at age 14 years was increased by earlier attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms, low school connectedness, low grade-point average, and high peer delinquency. Direct protective factors for youth violence at age 14 years included low ADHD symptoms, low emotional distress, high educational aspirations, and high grade-point averages. Bivariate analyses showed a lower risk of violence among youth aged 18-20 years who reported low peer delinquency at age 13 years. Multiple logistic regression analyses predicting violence involvement showed direct protective effects for low ADHD symptoms and low emotional distress at age 14 years, and a direct protective effect for low peer delinquency at ages 18-20 years, after controlling for demographic characteristics. Findings suggest that violence involvement remains difficult to predict but indicate the importance of assessing both risk and direct protective factors for understanding violent behavior.

Risk and Direct Protective Factors for Youth Violence: Results from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Multisite Violence Prevention Project

<h3>Background</h3> This study was conducted as part of a multisite effort to examine risk and direct protective factors for youth violence. <h3>Purpose</h3> The goal was to identify those factors in the lives of young people that increase or decrease the risk of violence. These analyses fill an important gap in the literature, as few studies have examined risk and direct protective factors for youth violence across multiple studies. <h3>Setting/participants</h3> Data on 4432 middle-school youth, from the CDC Multisite Violence Prevention Project were used. <h3>Main outcome measures</h3> Evaluations were made of effects of variables coded as risk and direct protective factors in the fall of 6th grade on violence measured in spring of 7th and 8th grades. Factors tested included depression, delinquency, alcohol and drug involvement, involvement in family activities, academic achievement, attitudes toward school, truancy, and peer deviance. Most variables were coded with two sets of dummy variables indicating risk and protective directions of effects. <h3>Results</h3> Results showed that higher teacher-rated study skills were associated with lower subsequent violence across genders and ethnic groups. Affiliation with deviant peers was significantly associated with increased subsequent violence among youth reporting their race/ethnicity as white or other, marginally associated with increased violence among African-American youth, and unrelated among Latino youth. <h3>Conclusions</h3> This study identified some factors than should be areas of interest for effective prevention programs. Some ethnic differences also should be considered in planning of prevention. <h3>Trial registration</h3> The CDC Multisite Violence Prevention Project completed enrollment prior to July 2005.

Implications of Direct Protective Factors for Public Health Research and Prevention Strategies to Reduce Youth Violence

The development of work on direct protective factors for youth violence has been delayed by conceptual and methodologic problems that have constrained the design, execution, and interpretation of prevention research. These problems are described in detail and actively addressed in review and analytic papers developed by the CDC's Expert Panel on Protective Factors for youth violence. The present paper synthesizes findings from these papers, specifies their implications for public health research and prevention strategies to reduce youth violence, and suggests directions for future research.

Gaming machine addiction: The role of avoidance, accessibility and social support.

Commonality in etiology and clinical expression plus high comorbidity between pathological gambling and substance use disorders suggest common underlying motives. It is important to understand common motivators and differentiating factors. An overarching framework of addiction was used to examine predictors of problem gambling in current electronic gaming machine (EGM) gamblers. Path analysis was used to examine the relationships between antecedent factors (stressors, coping habits, social support), gambling motivations (avoidance, accessibility, social) and gambling behavior. Three hundred and forty seven (229 females: M = 29.20 years, SD = 14.93; 118 males: M = 29.64 years, SD = 12.49) people participated. Consistent with stress, coping and addiction theory, situational life stressors and general avoidance coping were positively related to avoidance-motivated gambling. In turn, avoidance-motivated gambling was positively related to EGM gambling frequency and problems. Consistent with exposure theory, life stressors were positively related to accessibility-motivated gambling, and accessibility-motivated gambling was positively related to EGM gambling frequency and gambling problems. These findings are consistent with other addiction research and suggest avoidance-motivated gambling is part of a more generalized pattern of avoidance coping with relative accessibility to EGM gambling explaining its choice as a method of avoidance. Findings also showed social support acted as a direct protective factor in relation to gambling frequency and problems and indirectly via avoidance and accessibility gambling motivations. Finally, life stressors were positively related to socially motivated gambling but this motivation was not related to either social support or gambling behavior suggesting it has little direct influence on gambling problems.

Risk and protective factors for residential foster care adolescents

Based on Jessor's (1998) Problem Behavior Theory, this study investigated the relationship between risk and protective factors and adolescent psychopathology and adjustment. For this purpose, adolescent girls (n = 69) and boys (n = 71) living in residential foster homes in the city of Tehran, responded to an adapted version of the Adolescent Health and Development Questionnaire, Jessor, 1998) and their foster home caregivers rated the adolescents' internalizing/externalizing problems and prosocial behavior with the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ, Goodman, 2001). This study identified several influential aspects at the levels of the individual, foster home, peers and community that serve as a direct risk and protective factors, and also documented indirect pathways of gender, individual, foster home, peers and community influence. Three main patterns, protective, protective and enhancing, and protective but reactive seemed to characterize most of the risk by protective factor interactions. The risk and protective factors associated with foster home adolescents' mental health are broadly in line with previous published findings. Based on the present findings, the extension of universal intervention programs designed within the framework of PBT and which address multiple targets seems justified to be used with foster care home adolescents.

Do Competence Skills Moderate the Impact of Social Influences to Drink and Perceived Social Benefits of Drinking on Alcohol Use Among Inner-City Adolescents?

Only a few studies have found competence skills to be a protective factor against adolescent alcohol use; others did not find a direct effect on alcohol. A possible reason for this is that competence skills may moderate the effects of risk factors for alcohol use and that aspect has not been examined often or in a longitudinal design. This study tested whether several competence skills served either as direct protective factors against alcohol use or moderators of the impact of social risk factors on alcohol use. Participants (N = 1318) completed questionnaires that included measures of decision-making skills, refusal skill techniques, resisting media influences, friends' drinking and perceived social benefits of drinking, as well as current drinking amount and future drinking at baseline, one-year follow-up and two-year follow-up. Data analyses were conducted using multi-level mixed effects generalized linear models with random intercept. All the competence skills and the risk factors predicted current and future drinking. Several significant interactions were found between (1) perceived social benefits of drinking and decision-making skills, (2) perceived social benefits of drinking and refusal skill techniques and (3) friends' drinking and refusal skill techniques. Competence skills served as protective factors, as well as moderators. One possible reason that competence enhancement approaches to alcohol prevention are effective may be due to the inclusion of the competence skills component.

Religion and vulnerability among low-risk adolescents

Studies of resilient youth have documented the helpful influence of religion in their lives. In the absence of positive influences among high-risk youth, religion and religious organizations in particular often serve to promote prosocial outcomes. This study, on the other hand, investigates whether religion and religious change are comparably effective influences in reducing the vulnerability of low-risk youth to drinking, drug use, delinquency, problems in school, and poor grades. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this study identified at least one influential aspect of religion that serves as a direct protective factor across each mode of vulnerability, and also documented indirect pathways of religious influence. We discuss the findings and consider the variable influence of religion on youth.