The Social Context of Violence: A Study of Repeated Victimization inAdolescents and Young Adults

摘要

Multiple factors may influence the risk of exposure to childhood violence andrepeated victimization, although most research has focused on individual ratherthan contextual factors. Moreover, it is unclear whether family backgroundfactors associated with exposure to childhood violence also are associated withrevictimization in young adulthood. This article investigates individual andcontextual factors associated with childhood abuse and revictimization. Datafrom a community telephone survey, collected at two different time points( = 1,011, 16-33 years of age), were used. Logisticregression analysis was applied to analyze family background factors inchildhood violence–exposed cases and non-exposed controls. Similar analyses wereconducted for the relationship of individual and contextual variables in therevictimized and the non-revictimized groups. The adjusted analyses showed thatsocial problems (≥2 or more social problems: odds ratio [OR] = 2.89, 95%confidence interval [CI] = [1.41, 5.94]) and frequent binge drinking (OR = 1.21,95% CI = [1.05, 1.40]) were significantly associated with repeated victimizationwhereas social support decreased the odds (OR = 0.74, 95% CI = [0.55, 0.99]).Family problems and low family cohesion growing up (although measured at Wave 2)were significantly associated with childhood exposure to violence, but not withrevictimization. Our findings emphasizes that it is useful to separate factorsassociated with childhood abuse from factors related to revictimization toidentify current ecological aspects that can be addressed to prevent furtherabuse.