School Connectedness, Anger Behaviors, and Relationships of Violent and Nonviolent American Youth

Perspectives in Psychiatric Care, Oct-Dec 2004 by Thomas, Sandra P, Smith, Helen

Limitations

Several limitations of this study must be acknowledged. Generalizability is an issue because of the nonrandom method of data collection. The racial characteristics of the sample do not match percentages of minorities in the national population. In future studies, having a larger number of minority participants to use in statistical comparisons may permit discovery of statistically significant differences between groups. Income data were not collected in the present study, but we presume that the Internet users who participated in our survey are more affluent and probably differ in other ways from youths contacted via a random sampling procedure. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation survey (Jesdanun, 2001), young people from higher SES backgrounds are more likely to have gone online than those from lower or working-class backgrounds. Whites are more likely to have Internet access from home (85%), compared with 66% of blacks and 55% of Hispanics. On the other hand, this sample of Internet users provided us with a valuable glimpse of contemporary youth who do not fit the standard violence risk profile of poverty, parental criminality, and community disorganization.

Self-report data create another study limitation, for the researchers have no means to check the veracity of respondents' answers. However, the same limitation would have applied to a mailed questionnaire. Any tendencies toward lying or making socially desirable responses should have been minimized by the anonymity provided by the Web site; participants were assured their answers could never be linked to their identities. Given that boys and girls had to seek out the Web site to become involved in the study, participation was truly voluntary. Both violent and nonviolent youth appeared to answer the Internet survey questions freely and candidly.

The Framingham Anger Scales may not tap all relevant dimensions of anger in samples of youth. To be more specific, the FAS do not permit a fully differentiated picture of aggressive forms of anger expression. Recent factor-analytic research with a new instrument identified three distinct forms of aggressive anger expression in adolescents: abusive verbal anger, physical aggression toward people, and physical aggression toward objects (slamming doors, throwing things) (Deffenbacher & Swaim, 1999). Factors replicated across gender, ethnic, and developmental groups (i.e., middle- and high-school students). The new instrument may prove useful in expanding our understanding of aggressive youth.

A final limitation of the study is its cross-sectional design, prohibiting discovery of answers to chicken-and-egg questions such as: Does violent behavior precede or follow disconnectedness from peers and school? Does perception of unfair school discipline precede or follow dislike of school and penalties for angry acting-out? Few studies have traced the trajectory of violent youth over time, illuminating crucial turning points.

One retrospective study, involving youths (ages 15-18) already incarcerated for murder, provides some clues regarding the trajectory (Pharris, 2002). In each boy's life, there was a critical traumatic event that set him on the pathway to violent crime. The event in some cases was being bullied or assaulted, in other cases not being able to protect a mother being assaulted, being placed in foster care or special education, or witnessing a shooting. These events occurred when the boys were aged between 9 and 14. Common to all events were reactions of shame and fear, compounded by the boy's inability to talk with anyone about these feelings. All of the boys began getting in trouble in school (fighting, getting suspended) and eventually lost their connection to school, dropping out around age 13. Relates Pharris, "A point came when they could not figure out how to get back into school or how to succeed in school if they were to get in. The lost connection with school was a source of despair as they felt their time was running out and it was too late to get back on track with their lives" (p. 37). The boys felt that no one wanted them in the school anyway. Future research must examine such critical events more closely, with an eye toward swift and effective preventive and remedial interventions that can be undertaken by schools, juvenile justice officials, and mental healthcare providers.