Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
ARTICLESLinks Between Pubertal Timing and Neighborhood Contexts: Implications for Girls’ Violent Behavior
Section snippets
Participants
The sample was drawn from neighborhoods that were part of the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN). To examine neighborhoods, Chicago's 865 census tracts were combined to create 343 neighborhood clusters (NCs). NCs, averaging approximately 8,000 people each, were composed of census tracts that are geographically adjacent to and socially similar to each other (see Sampson et al., 1997). After NCs were identified, we used a two-stage sampling procedure to select a random
Descriptive Analyses
At wave 1, more than 35% of adolescents lived in single-parent homes (Table 1). Forty percent of PCs did not complete high school, primarily reflecting the high percentage of the Hispanic participants who emigrated from Mexico, where the school structure differs from that in the United States.
Approximately one third (n = 179) of girls engaged in at least one act of violence during the 12 months preceding wave 1. At wave 2, the number of girls who engaged in violent behavior dropped to roughly
DISCUSSION
This study brings a developmental/ecological approach to examining the effects of pubertal timing on violence across neighborhoods. Results showed that biological changes do not exist in isolation from the social context; girls who experienced two stresses (i.e., early maturation in neighborhoods of disadvantage) were at greatest risk of acting violently. The contextual effect of neighborhood disadvantage persisted even when controlling for other neighborhood and family characteristics. This
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This work was supported by NIMH grant R03MH62542-02 and grants from NIJ, MacArthur Foundation, NICHD, and NIMH.
Disclosure: Dr. Brennan has a for-profit relationship with the Goodman Research Group, Inc., Cambridge, MA, and with WFD Consulting, Watertown, MA. The other authors have no financial relationships to disclose.