Abstract

During adolescence, exposure to community violence (ECV) can negatively impact multiple facets of health and future achievement. Existing research mainly focuses on the risk factors that increase ECV, although multiple promotive factors are associated with lower levels of ECV. However, research has not examined the unique and combined effects of these promotive factors on ECV. The current study investigates promotive factors at the individual, peer, and supportive adult relationship levels for their unique and combined associations with ECV to determine which factors are associated with the lowest levels of ECV. 2725 adolescents from three urban middle schools (Mage = 13.22; 48% male; 90% Black, 18% Hispanic or Latino) reported measures of ECV, positive outlook, self-efficacy for nonviolence, peers’ prosocial behavior, friends’ support for nonviolence, presence of a caring adult, and parental support for nonviolence. Regression analyses showed that a combination of multiple promotive factors better explained the variance in ECV than any single promotive factor alone, indicating that promotive factors have compounding effects. Positive outlook, self-efficacy for nonviolence, friends’ support for nonviolence, and the presence of a caring adult were all uniquely associated with lower levels of exposure to community violence across all steps of the hierarchical regression. In alignment with positive youth development theory, these results demonstrate that an adolescent’s ECV risk is lower if they have more promotive factors. These findings emphasize the importance of relational promotive factors as future targets for strengths-based interventions.

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