Date of Award

2016

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Psychology

Abstract

Community violence is considered a “public health epidemic” in the US. Latino youth and families are a burgeoning population in the United States, and many of whom live in neighborhoods exposed to community violence. Multiple contexts should be assessed identifying developmental assets youth use to adjust positively when exposed to violence. This study examines how different environmental contexts, i.e., home, school, neighborhood and acculturation, influence the relationship between exposure to community violence and self-efficacy for Latino youth. The current study uses an archival dataset of a larger longitudinal study (Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods). A confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to examine the structure of self-efficacy for the Latino youth and found a multifactor model with the best fit. While many main effects were found in the moderational analyses, only positive family quality revealed a significant interaction effect. Youth who reported higher levels of witnessing community violence experienced lower levels of home efficacy if they had lower levels of positive family quality. This continues to support the extensive past research where positive family support serves to predict adaptive youth outcomes, even when faced with stressful situations like violence exposure. Using or creating interventions to capitalize on family and these values would be important to disseminate through school- or community-based groups to support favorable outcomes.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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