• Arch Pediat Adol Med · Jun 2004

    Comparative Study

    Characterization of interpersonal violence events involving young adolescent girls vs events involving young adolescent boys.

    • Cynthia J Mollen, Joel A Fein, A Russell Localio, and Dennis R Durbin.
    • Department of Pediatrics, Division of Emergency Medicine, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA. mollenc@e-mail.chop.edu
    • Arch Pediat Adol Med. 2004 Jun 1;158(6):545-50.

    BackgroundMultiple studies have demonstrated that girls are engaging in interpersonal violence. However, little is known about the potentially unique aspects of violent events involving girls.ObjectivesTo describe characteristics of interpersonal violence events in preadolescents and young adolescents and to determine if events involving any girl are different than those involving only boys.DesignA cross-sectional survey of 8- to 14-year-old patients who were being evaluated at an urban children's hospital emergency department for injuries caused by interpersonal violence was conducted between September 2000 and August 2001. The survey asked the patient to describe details about event circumstances, opponents, weapon use, and injury severity.ResultsWe enrolled 190 patients into the study; 58 (31%) were girls. Seventy-four events (39%) had a girl involved, 156 (82%) occurred on a weekday, 127 (67%) were classified as fights, 140 (74%) were with a known opponent, and 93 (49%) occurred at school. Events involving girls were more likely than events involving all boys to occur at home (relative risk [RR], 1.6; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.0-2.5). Both boys and girls reported "being disrespected" and "teasing" as popular reasons for a fight. Events involving girls were more commonly related to a "recurrence of a previous fight" (RR, 6.4; 95% CI, 1.9-21.5), were more likely to end because of adult intervention (RR, 1.7; 95% CI, 1.1-2.6), and have a family member try to physically break up the fight (RR, 3.7; 95% CI, 1.5-9.1).ConclusionViolent events involving preadolescent and early adolescent girls are more likely to be in response to a previous event and to involve the home environment and family member intervention. Health care professionals should screen violently injured girls for safety concerns and retaliation plans and consider engaging the family in efforts to prevent future events.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…