Original ArticlesParent–youth concordance regarding violence exposure: relationship to youth psychosocial functioning
Section snippets
Sample selection
The study was an observational survey using baseline data gathered between December 1995 and February 1996 on youth who were recruited to participate in a randomized, controlled, community-based violence-prevention effectiveness trial. Participants were 349 adolescents (96% African-American) between the ages of 9 and 15 years, along with one of their parents or caregivers, who resided in any 1 of 10 low-income public housing developments in a East Coast city. Their median age was 12 years old
Results
Although 349 parent–youth dyads agreed to join the study, only 333 dyads had sufficient data necessary to perform the concordance analyses. Eighty-seven (26%) parent–youth dyads were assigned to the low concordance group (< 50% agreement), 186 (56%) dyads were assigned to the moderate concordance group (50–80% agreement), while 60 (18%) were in the high concordance group (< 80% agreement). As shown in Table 2, there was a significant gender effect across the three concordance groups (p ≤ .01).
Discussion
Overall, parents of African-American youth residing in urban public housing developments tended to underestimate the extent to which their children were both exposed to acts of violence and suffered from distress symptomatology. This was seen for acts of direct victimization (i.e., attacked with a knife), as well as events youth witnessed. Most striking was the tendency for parents to underestimate youth distress. Rather than being a new finding, this proclivity for parents to underreport
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the entire Neighborhoods in Action (NIA) team, without whose efforts this research would not have been possible, including Bonita Stanton, Izabel Ricardo, Linda Kaljee, Laura Rachuba, Hibist Astatke, Jennifer Galbraith, George Cornick, Carmen Nieves, and Juanita Morris. They also thank the parents, youth, and public housing staff who participated in the NIA project. Support for this research was provided by the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research
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