Violence exposure, conflict, and health outcomes in inner‐city African American adolescents

Purpose To examine relationships among community and school violence exposure, parent‐adolescent conflict, coping style, and self‐reported health in a sample of 432 high‐risk, inner‐city African American adolescents at age 14 years. Design and methods Multiple regression and principal component analysis were used to analyze the secondary data. After controlling for multiple covariates (eg, sex, age, blood lead levels, and socioeconomic status), both violence exposure and posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) were related to health outcomes. The survey of exposure to community violence, the safe‐school survey, and the conflict tactics scale were used to measure community violence, school violence, and parent‐adolescent conflict. Coping was evaluated using the general coping scale. The child health illness profile‐adolescent edition was used to obtain self‐reported health measures, and the clinician‐assisted PTSD scale was used to measure PTSS. Results Higher exposure to community violence was associated with less emotional comfort, less family involvement, higher individual risk, and poorer academic and work performance. Parent‐adolescent conflict predicted less physical and emotional comfort and poorer home safety and health. Conclusions Our findings suggest that it is important to evaluate both violence exposure and the responses to the exposure, which can include both PTSS and diverse coping strategies.