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Neighborhood informal social control (ISC) refers to neighbors’ willingness to intervene for common good. The protective effect of ISC on child maltreatment has been mixed in previous studies partly due to ISC measurements issues. Also, those studies that used advanced measures have not considered age of the child although adolescent maltreatment has a different aspect. Therefore, the current study aims to explore 1) whether the ISC has negative association with maltreatment during adolescence and 2) whether the specific ISC dimension (protective, punitive) have relationship with adolescent maltreatment. Through exploring dimensions, specific mechanism of preventive effects will be identified.
Method: The participants were 2,157 adolescents from middle school and high school in Seoul and the metropolitan area of South Korea. A purposive sampling method was used to select a total of 13 schools. The self-administered survey was conducted from December 15th to 30th 2014.
Adolescents reported the frequency of maltreatment behavior by each parent during the last year. The CTS-PC consisted of 17 items that were rated on a five-point scale. For each subscale of very severe physical abuse (4 items), severe physical abuse (6 items), and physical abuse (10 items), the items were summed and dichotomized. The measure of informal social control on child maltreatment (ISC_CM) had 9 items that asked adolescents about the likelihood of neighbors’ intervention in the situations specific to child maltreatment on a 5-point scale, ranging from 1 (Would never do this) to 5 (Actually did this). Protective ISC_CM had four items that included neighbors getting in between adolescent and parent or trying to calm down parents. Punitive ISC_CM had five items such as threatening parents or calling CPS. IPV exposure, gender, age, single-parent family, economic status, adolescents’ aggressive behavior were controlled. Since adolescents were nested within school, a series of mixed effects logistic regressions were conducted.
Results:
Neighborhood ISC was negatively associated with adolescents’ physical abuse last year (OR = .785, 95% CI = .688, .895), and severe physical abuse (OR = .836, 95% CI = .706, .99), but not with very severe physical abuse (OR= .869, 95% CI = .682, 1.107). When protective and punitive ISC were examined in the model, punitive ISC_CM had significant relationship with physical abuse (OR = .953, 95% CI = .924, .984), but protective ISC_CM was not.
Conclusions/implications:
Neighborhood ISC has been found to have a protective effect against severe physical abuse among adolescents. To provide a fertile context of ISC, it is important to increase mutual trust among neighbors, as well as enhance safety in the neighborhood. The significance of punitive ISC_CM, contrary to other studies that found the importance of protective ISC_CM, suggests that during adolescence, a harder approach might be needed. The likelihood that neighbors would invoke a CPS (Korean CPS had no power to remove children), or directly threaten parents might have deterred adolescent violence due to fear of losing respect in the community.