505 - Adult perceptions of youths' attitudes toward violence and peer delinquency and youth-reported violence experiences

Familial adults and natural mentors play a key role in supporting youth impacted by violence. Understanding how adults’ perceptions of youth attitudes toward violence (ATV) and peer delinquency (PD) relate to youths’ actual experiences of violence may inform dyadic programming.

Objective: Our goal was to examine associations between adult perceptions of youth ATV and PD and youths’ actual violence experiences among a cohort of youth-adult dyads.

Design/Methods:

Youth involved in community-based violence prevention programs completed a cross-sectional, egocentric social network survey assessing past 30-day experiences of violence, including perpetration (e.g., getting in a physical fight; 8 items), victimization (e.g., being jumped or attacked by a group of people; 9 items), and witnessing (e.g., seeing someone carry a gun; 12 items). Dichotomous responses were summed and operationalized as counts. Youth enumerated their adult supports and identified one adult from their social network to be recruited for the study. Adults completed similar surveys with additional items assessing perceived youth ATV and PD behaviors. Demographics were summarized with descriptive statistics. Poisson regression examined associations between adult perceptions of youth ATV, PD, and each youth violence outcome, adjusted for youths’ age, gender, and strength of the youth-adult relationship. Regression coefficients represent adjusted incidence rate ratios (aIRR).

Results: Participants included forty youth-adult dyads. Among youth, mean age was 16.5 (SD=1.9) years. Twenty-five (62%) were female; the majority (n=35, 88%) identified as Black. Experiences of violence were common (Table 1). Among adults, mean age was 42.6 (SD=9.6) years. Most (n=33, 82%) identified as female and 33 (82%) as Black. Adults included 24 (60%) mothers, 4 (10%) fathers, and 3 (8%) maternal grandmothers, school coaches/counselors (n=2, 4%) and other family (e.g., aunt/uncle or cousin; n=5, 13%). There were no significant relationships between adult perceptions of youth ATV and youth violence (Table 2). Increased adult perceptions of PD were significantly associated with higher rates of youth violence victimization (aIRR=2.04 [95%CI=1.05-3.89]) and witnessing (aIRR=1.78 [95%CI=1.07-3.02]).

Conclusion(s): Among youth-adult dyads, we found significant associations between adult perceptions of PD and youth-reported violence experiences. Adult perspectives on peer interactions and behaviors may be relevant for informing violence prevention efforts, particularly those which adopt a mentorship framework.