Neighborhood Predictors of Dating Violence Victimization and Perpetration in Young Adulthood: A Multilevel Study

• Published in: American journal of public health (1971) Vol. 100; no. 9; pp. 1737 - 1744
• Main Authors: JAIN, Sonia, BUKA, Stephen L, SUBRAMANIAN, S. V, MOLNAR, Beth E
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, DC American Public Health Association 01.09.2010
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adolescent Behavior; Adult; Biological and medical sciences; Censuses; Chicago; Child abuse & neglect; Cohort analysis; Courtship; Crime Victims; Crisis intervention; Domestic violence; Female; Gender; General aspects; Humans; Interpersonal Relations; Linear Models; Male; Males; Medical sciences; Mens health; Miscellaneous; Murders & murder attempts; Neighborhoods; Personal relationships; Poverty; Public health; Public health. Hygiene; Public health. Hygiene-occupational medicine; Research and Practice; Residence Characteristics; Risk Factors; Sex crimes; Sex Factors; Social control; Socioeconomic factors; Studies; Teenagers; Theory; Urban Population; Variables; Victimization; Victims of crime; Violence; Women; Young Adult; Young adults; Chicago; Human; Social influence; Multilevel analysis; Violence; Prediction; Adult; Evolution; Residential neighborhoods; Predictive factor; Age; Public health
• ISSN: 0090-0036; 1541-0048
• DOI: 10.2105/ajph.2009.169730

We examined whether social processes of neighborhoods, such as collective efficacy, during individual's adolescent years affect the likelihood of being involved in physical dating violence during young adulthood. Using longitudinal data on 633 urban youths aged 13 to 19 years at baseline and data from their neighborhoods (collected by the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods), we ran multilevel linear regression models separately by gender to assess the association between collective efficacy and physical dating violence victimization and perpetration, controlling for individual covariates, neighborhood poverty, and perceived neighborhood violence. Females were significantly more likely than were males to be perpetrators of dating violence during young adulthood (38% vs 19%). Multilevel analyses revealed some variation in dating violence at the neighborhood level, partly accounted for by collective efficacy. Collective efficacy was predictive of victimization for males but not females after control for confounders; it was marginally associated with perpetration (P=.07). The effects of collective efficacy varied by neighborhood poverty. Finally, a significant proportion (intraclass correlation=14%-21%) of the neighborhood-level variation in male perpetration remained unexplained after modeling. Community-level strategies may be useful in preventing dating violence.