Suchergebnisse

There is a fairly well‐established demographic profile of gun owners in the United States, yet much less is known about the meaning and importance individuals attach to guns, their right to own them, or the varying facets of gun owner identity. Unknown is if and/or how the attitudes, fears, concerns, and anxieties that influence gun ownership also shape the significance of guns in individuals' lives. To that end, we examine three assessments of gun meaning: the importance of the right to own guns for one's sense of freedom; the importance of being a gun owner to one's personal identity; and the extent to which owners find guns emotionally and morally empowering (e.g., guns making one feel confident, important, in control). Using data from an original Mechanical Turk survey (n = 876), we show that diffuse political, social, and cultural anxieties shape gun meaning more so than do instrumental fears around crime and victimization.

ObjectivesThis study examines the effect of crime‐specific fears (worry about crime and perceived risk of crime), violent victimization, and diffuse anxieties (belief in a dangerous world [BDW], general distrust, and belief in others' violent intentions) on protective gun ownership and involvement in "active" gun behaviors (i.e., gun accessibility in the home and handgun carrying).MethodsWe use data on over 4,000 U.S. adults from the 2017 nationally representative Pew Research Center's American Trends Panel.ResultsFear of crime and perceived risks are largely unrelated to gun ownership, yet violent victimization influences protective ownership, which in turn influences gun accessibility. Additionally, diffuse fears and anxieties also matter for protective ownership and accessibility, with some effects explained by political party affiliation. Broader, general distrust of others is associated with owners' frequency of carrying their handgun outside of the home.ConclusionThe results highlight the complexity of the fear‐guns link, with multiple dimensions of fear and experience at work.

Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this study examines individual and neighborhood predictors of adolescent and young adult survival expectations—their confidence of surviving to age 35. Analyses revealed that within‐person increases in depression and violent perpetration decreased the odds of expecting to survive. Individuals who rated themselves in good health and received routine physical care had greater survival expectations. Consistent with documented health disparities, Black and Hispanic youth had lower survival expectations than did their White peers. Neighborhood poverty was linked to diminished survival expectations both within and between persons, with the between‐person association remaining significant controlling for mental and physical health, exposure to violence, own violence, and a wide range of sociodemographic factors.

Youth violent victimization (YVV) is a risk factor for precocious exits from adolescence via early coresidential union formation. It remains unclear, however, whether these early unions 1) are associated with intimate partner violence (IPV) victimization, 2) interrupt victim continuity or victim–offender overlap through protective and prosocial bonds, or 3) are inconsequential. By using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (N = 11,928; 18–34 years of age), we examine competing hypotheses for the effect of early union timing among victims of youth violence (n = 2,479)—differentiating across victimization only, perpetration only, and mutually combative relationships and considering variation by gender. The results from multinomial logistic regression models indicate that YVV increases the risk of IPV victimization in first unions, regardless of union timing; the null effect of timing indicates that delaying union formation would not reduce youth victims' increased risk of continued victimization. Gender‐stratified analyses reveal that earlier unions can protect women against IPV perpetration, but this is partly the result of an increased risk of IPV victimization. The findings suggest that YVV has significant transformative consequences, leading to subsequent victimization by coresidential partners, and this association might be exacerbated among female victims who form early unions. We conclude by discussing directions for future research.

The prevalence of substance use behavior and the personal characteristics and social and cultural factors that influence substance use among children have been studied extensively. However, much less attention has been directed at the attitudes towards, and particularly the perceived risks of, using substances, and even less research has focused on Hispanic youth, whose rates of substance use have been increasing. Understanding what factors are associated with perceived risk is important because there is evidence that perceived risk is associated with subsequent substance use. The current study uses longitudinal data collected from 553 children in the Cicero Youth Development (CYD) Project to identify individual and environmental factors associated with the perceived risk of substance use. We pay particular attention to dimensions of nativity and acculturation in an effort to determine whether there are differences in risk perception between U.S.-born Hispanic children and their foreign-born counterparts. Results indicate that a number of factors are associated with perceived risk, including family support, parent-child communication, peer substance use, and child temperament. Additionally, U.S.-born Hispanics perceive substances as less risky than immigrants, and among immigrants, length of time in the U. S. is negatively associated with perceiving great risk in substance use. Implications for policy and prevention strategies are discussed.

ObjectiveAlthough there is little empirical evidence linking gun ownership with personal well‐being, speculation is widespread in gun culture. In this article, we test whether people who own guns are more or less satisfied with their lives than people who do not own guns.MethodsWe employ data collected from three national surveys, the Baylor Religion Survey (2014), the Chapman University Survey on American Fears (2014), and the General Social Survey (2018) to formally assess this understudied association.ResultsIn adjusted models, gun ownership was unrelated to life satisfaction. This general pattern was consistent across surveys, different measures and specifications of life satisfaction, and a wide range of subgroups.ConclusionOur analyses contribute to the growing study of gun ownership and personal well‐being and challenge theoretical perspectives and cultural narratives about how owning a gun can contribute favorably to one's quality of life.

Early adversity can alter development of neurocognition, including executive cognitive and emotional regulatory functions. This is the first study to explore differential relationships between personal (physical and emotional abuse and neglect, school and parental stressors) and community (neighborhood problems and witnessing neighborhood violence) stressors and neurocognition. Predominantly Latino children ( n = 553) aged 10 to 12 years completed tasks measuring intelligence, impulsivity, problem solving, cognitive flexibility, decision making, and emotion attributions. Adjusting for age and parent education, bivariate regression analyses found exposure to personal stressors to be associated with relative deficits in at least one neurocognitive function. Community stressors were related to relative deficits in emotion attributions and problem solving. In multivariate analyses, neglect was related to misattributions of emotion and IQ deficits, and physical abuse was related to problem solving. Community stressors were not correlated with neurocognition when viewed relative to personal stressors. Stressor types were differentially associated with performance on specific neurocognitive tasks.