Original articleNegative Consequences Associated With Witnessing Severe Violent Events: The Role of Control-Related Beliefs
Section snippets
Participants and procedures
The original study sample consisted of 678 children and families, representative of students entering first grade in nine Baltimore City public elementary schools in 1993. The children were recruited for participation in two school-based, universal, preventive intervention trials targeting early learning and aggressive/disruptive behavior [26]. The Classroom Centered Intervention [26] consisted of three components: (1) curricular enhancements; (2) improved classroom behavior management
Results
Sample descriptives. Full sample descriptive statistics can be seen in Table 2. The sample was about half male and a majority Black. Close to 70% of the sample received free or reduced lunch and 12% of the sample reported witnessing a severe form of community violence exposure (witnessing someone being shot, stabbed, or killed).
Class enumeration. The class enumeration process began with fitting a single class model and then comparing fit statistics with the addition of each class. Class fit
Discussion
The purpose of this study was to identify trajectories of adolescents’ control-related beliefs, examine whether witnessing severe community violence influenced belief trajectories, and explore how variations in control-related belief trajectories contributed to risk for mental and behavioral health problems in adulthood. Three trajectories of control-related beliefs were identified, a low perceived control class, a high increasing perceived control class, and a moderate stable perceived control
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Conflict of interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.