NCJ Number
185298
Journal
Law and Human Behavior Volume: 24 Issue: 4 Dated: August 2000 Pages: 449-456
Editor(s)
Richard L. Wiener
Date Published
August 2000
Length
8 pages
Annotation
The individualistic fallacy, i.e., the fallacy of assuming that individual-level outcomes can be explained exclusively in terms of individual-level characteristics, is a problem with most research on violence and is especially problematic in research on mental disorders and violence.
Abstract
To further study the importance of contextual measurement in violence risk assessment research, data were obtained on 270 discharged psychiatric patients in Pittsburgh. Questions about violence were adapted from the Conflict Tactics Scale, and racial status was measured by asking patients to identify whether they considered themselves to be white, black, or Hispanic. Results of logistic regression analysis documented the significant bivariate association between black racial status and community violence in the sample of discharged psychiatric patients. The odds of violence for blacks was 2.7 times greater than the odds of violence for whites. However, when neighborhood disadvantage was added to the logistic regression equation, the significant effect of racial status was eliminated and the odds ratio was reduced by about 50 percent from 2.7 to 1.28. This result suggested that, despite the overall association between race and violence, black and white patients residing in comparably disadvantaged neighborhoods showed no differences in their rates of violence. The author believes that the findings emphasize the importance of contextual measurement in research aimed at predicting violence among discharged psychiatric patients. 24 references, 1 table, and 1 figure