Teachers College - Columbia University: News: In an article in the Journal of Community Psychology, TC Professor Jeanne Brooks-Gunn and Margo Gardner, a researcher at the College’s for Children and Young Families, report on their discovery of an inverse association between the variety of youth organizations available at in an urban neighborhood and adolescents’ exposure to community violence.
Using data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN), and Brooks-Gun found that “exposure to community violence occurs less frequently among adolescents who live in neighborhoods that offer a greater, versus lesser, variety of youth organizations.” Although that finding is keeping with the common perception about the protective role youth organizations play in neighborhoods, the relationship isn’t as straightforward as having access to a greater variety of neighborhood youth organizations equates to adolescents’ participation in organized community-based activities, which, in turn, protects against community violence exposure.
