Issue for School-Aged ChildrenWhy Adolescents Fight: A Qualitative Study of Youth Perspectives on Fighting and Its Prevention
Section snippets
Study Design
Focus groups were conducted with adolescents 13 to 17 years old, 6 groups with adolescents who have been in a fight (fighters) and 6 with adolescents who have not been in a fight (nonfighters). Students self-reported participation in a physical fight in the past 12 months. Groups were stratified by gender and race/ethnicity. Participants were recruited at 2 urban middle schools and 3 high schools using flyers and in-person visits to classrooms by study personnel, who stated that the purpose of
Results
There were 65 participants in 12 focus groups. The mean age was 15.7 years (Table 2), most identified English as the primary language spoken at home, and 37% of fighters and 82% of nonfighters lived in 2-parent homes. Among fighters (Table 3), 79% had hurt someone badly enough to need medical care in the prior year, 83% had been threatened by someone, over half had threatened someone, and almost one third had carried a weapon and threatened someone with a weapon.
Discussion
This is the first qualitative study, to our knowledge, to compare the perspectives of adolescent fighters and nonfighters about fighting and strategies to prevent fighting. Themes were examined in the social-ecological framework of risk and protective factors for fighting at the individual, relationship, community, and societal levels. Risk factors exist at all levels; however, protective factors were identified primarily at the individual and family relationship levels.
Parent–child
Acknowledgments
This study was funded by the Southwest Medical Foundation Program for the Development and Evaluation of Model Community Health Initiatives in Dallas (PDEMCHID), and supported in part by grant K23HD068401 to Dr Shetgiri from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). Dr. Lee is supported in part by the University of Texas Southwestern Center for Patient-Centered Outcomes Research through a grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.