Physical Violence Among School-Aged Children in the United States: Major Trends, Risk Factors, and Prevention Approaches

Purpose: The purpose of present study was to examine the school-aged children’s physical violent behaviors’ relationships with social structural disadvantageous, social relationship, substance use, and other factors, using the research theoretical framework of multiple disadvantageous model which previously to examine the victim homicide, substance use among adolescents, domestic violence ( Cheng & Li, 2017;Cheng & Lo, 2015; Lo, Howell, & Cheng, 2015;Cheng & Lo, 2014). The present study analyzed the multiple disadvantageous factors affecting physical violent behaviors among school-aged children in the United States.

Method: The current study employed a sample of 11,585 school-aged children extracted from a cross-sectional secondary dataset, Health Behavior in School-Aged Children (HBSC), 2009-2010.  Multivariate regression model was applied to represent the relationships between physical violent behaviors associating with exploratory factors: social structural disadvantage (gender, race/ethnicity), social relationship (parental monitoring, peer affiliation, school performance, educational pressure and etc.), substance use (alcohol drinking, any drug use) and other negative factors (daily computer/videogame usage and educational pressure).

Results: As for the disadvantageous social structural factor, African American children (b=.13, p=.16) was not significantly associated with physical violent behaviors compared to White school-aged children. Moreover, Hispanic and people in other races were also not significantly associated with physical violent behaviors among school-aged children. Peer affiliation demonstrated a positive association with physical violent behaviors among school-aged children (b=.035, p<.001) in the current study. In addition, multivariate regression results showed students had experienced non-physical violent bullying was positively associated with physical violent behaviors among school-aged children (b=.032, p<.01). Children were bullied by physical violence was positive associated with physical violent behaviors (b=.16, p<.01). School performance of children represented a positive association with physical violent behaviors among school-aged children (b=.13, p<.05). The daily usage for computers or video games. Daily usage for computers or video games (b=.028, p<.05) was a significant factor positively associated with physical violent behaviors among school-aged children. Multivariate regression results showed both alcohol drink (b=.45, p<.001) and any drug use (b=.43, p<.001) were positively associated with physical violent behaviors among school-aged children. In addition, the educational pressure was another significant predictor (b=.03, p=.021) positively associated with physical violent behaviors among school-aged children. 

Discussion and Implementation: According to the empirical results conducted by the present study, there was no sole cause of physical violence among school-aged children. It tended to be multiple causes of resulting the violent behaviors. In light of the current study, school-aged children with multiple disadvantageous risk factors were more likely to exhibit in physical violence. In consonance with the current findings, school educators and counselors should provide mental health assessments, drug screenings, as well as identification of potential dual diagnosis for children at risk of physical violence (Cheng & Li, 2017). Furthermore, parent training for deviant behaviors have beneficial effects for preventing the later violent behaviors among school-aged children (Scott, Briskman, & O’Connor, 2014).