Original article
Are There Detrimental Effects of Witnessing School Violence in Early Adolescence?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2008.04.011Get rights and content

Abstract

Purpose

We prospectively tested the extent to which witnessing school violence predicts psychosocial and school adjustment in students while accounting for their prior psychosocial characteristics and peer victimization. We also explored the role of feelings of insecurity in explaining this relationship.

Methods

Questionnaires were administered to 1104 students (52% boys) from five high schools from the Montreal area (Quebec, Canada) at the beginning, middle, and end of seventh grade. Self report measures included sociodemographic characteristics, victimization, witnessing violence, feelings of insecurity, internalizing and externalizing behavior problems, and measures of engagement, achievement, and truancy as indicators of school adjustment.

Results

Witnessing school violence was a comparatively better predictor of subsequent externalizing problems and school adjustment than actual victimization. Conversely, relative to having experienced violence as a witness, actual victimization more reliably estimated later internalizing problems. Feelings of insecurity partially explained the development of school engagement and truancy.

Conclusions

Our findings underscore the implications of school violence as a public health and safety issue, the consideration of witnessing as important in estimating its impact, and a comprehensive approach when developing and implementing strategies that aim to prevent this form of community violence.

Section snippets

Participants

Participants (51.6% boys) were aged 11–15 years (mean = 12.8, SD = .72) when recruited in 2000 at the beginning of seventh grade. In Québec, high schools include students from grade 7–11 (i.e., those 12–17 years old). The participants came from two private (n = 192 and n = 137) and three public French-Speaking schools (n = 296, n = 231, and n = 248; 70.2% of total sample) from the Montreal area (Quebec, Canada). This sample (N = 1104) comprised mainly students of Caucasian background (87.2%, of

Results

Table 1 reports the distribution of the participants according to the frequencies of having been victimized and witnessed school violence. Results underscore that witnessing violence was much more prevalent than victimization. A majority of students were never victims of school violence, but most of them witnessed or had heard about incidents. For the most violent acts, witnessing violence was limited to a few times during the year or during the past months. However other conducts were observed

Discussion

The results of this study show that students need not be direct victims of school violence to suffer from it. Witnessing violence diminishes their well-being. Exposure to violent interactions makes them more likely to conduct themselves aggressively, dislike school, and even avoid it. Such violence is not necessarily extreme or spectacular. The effects of exposure were perceptible in the context of an average school day, where violent acts are less severe yet much more frequent. The remarkable

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