Impacts of socioeconomic, family, school, behavioural and mental difficulties on involvement in violence in boys and girls

peer reviewed ; Involvement in violence is common and may result from a number of deleterious socioeconomic, family, school, behavioral and mental difficulties, and sustained violence in early adolescence. The roles of these factors remain partially addressed because few of them have been investigated with often unknown chronologies. Preventing these issues is crucial to promote health and school achievement. This study assessed their impacts on involvement in violence among boys and girls. Design: Cross-sectional study with lifetime history reconstruction of life events. Methods: The sample included 1,559 middle-school adolescents from north-eastern France (778 boys and 781 girls, mean age 13.5, SD 1.3), who completed a self-administered questionnaire including gender, birth date, father’s occupation, parents’ education, nationality, income, social supports, and lifetime history reconstruction of parents’ separation/divorce/death, alcohol/tobacco/cannabis/hard drugs uses, repeating a school-year, sustained physical/verbal violence, sexual abuse, depressive symptoms (Kandel scale), suicide attempts, and involvement in violence. Involvement in violence was measured with an 11-item scale on fights in group or not, verbal violence, racial actions, taking something of others/shop, set fire, using weapon,damaging public/private property, in school, in school neighborhood, at home, and elsewhere (Cronbach's alpha 0.82, score>90th percentile). Social support was measured using a 9-item scale concerning relationships with people round about (Cronbach's alpha 0.56, score>90th percentile). Data were analyzed using Cox models including all factors to compute adjusted hazard ratios (aHR). Findings: Involvement in violence affected 10.3% of adolescents (14.3% in boys, 6.4% in girls, p<0.001). Among boys, involvement in violence was influenced by being inactive (unemployed/retired) offspring (aHR 2.63, 95%CI 1.48-4.69), alcohol use (1.76, 1.11-2.79), tobacco use (2.71, 1.56-4.69), hard drugs use (3.46, 1.73-6.91), ...