Summary
The research is about risk factors involved in gang membership and violence and how different domains raise youths' probability of venture into gangs and violence. The study got done from a survey collected from 5,395 eighth grade students from eleven cities in America. According to the article, two issues relating to risk factors associated with youth violence and gang membership get discussed. One is that the extent of cumulative risks is different or similar for gang membership and youth violence. The second issue is the risk factors extent in multivariate analyses are identical for both gang membership and youth violence. From the research results, it is clear that some approaches can get applied to both gang and violence prevention. It is also clear that some risk factors need greater attention. In multivariate analysis, the factors related to both violence form controlling: low guilt, spending time where alcohol and drugs are available, use of neutralizations, negative school surrounding, are all affected by gang membership and violence. The article concentrates more on lowering the odds of youth's participation in different violent kinds.
Assessment
The article indicates that the risk factors involved in gang membership are similar to those interested in violent offending. The accumulation of those factors makes youths to become gang involved. However, the analyses indicate a vast number of elements needed in achieving similar odds of gang membership compared to violent offending. It means that it takes courage for youths to get into gangs than to get involved in violence. Therefore, the authors indicate that the issue should get dealt with earlier before it gets a chance to accumulate. The significant issue then shows that steps on prevention of violence should focus on some shared risk factors, hence protecting the youths from getting involved.
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The author gets us to a consensus that things that minimize youth's impulsive and risk-taking tendencies, like getting involved in sports and games, boost the youth's moral convictions and social responsibilities in the individual domain. Similarly, in the peer domain, elements that facilitate youth choices on friends, like those that discourage commitment and association with deviant peers and support involvement with prosocial peers, make decisions to avoid getting involved with peers during unsupervised circumstances. In the school domain, situations involving students view that school surroundings possess high levels of gangs, crimes, and conflicts. I think the author makes proper use of data since the references get acquired from platforms like schools and outside its environs (health services).
Reflection
The article matches well with my research interest concerning risk factors for gang membership and violent offending, and the source was beneficial. I have gained the proper perception of the risk factors domains: family, individual, peer, community, and school. The collected data associated with school-based surveys represented all community's jurisdiction, large urban areas, medium-sized cities, and substantial ethnic/racial heterogeneity.
There is a section in which the author applied behavioral measures in determining risk factors in which youths are getting into gang membership, and violent offending was focused. The part will be essential in my research paper since the data relied upon was reported directly from students and not official records. A section of a nonoffending group who had never participated in gang membership or violent offending was used as a comparison. This makes relevant data for my project since it will offer comparisons and conclusions on the topic. The article is well-timed since most gang and violent traits originate from schools, and the problem has affected most adolescent youths.
