NCJ Number
208923
Journal
Journal of Interpersonal Violence Volume: 16 Issue: 7 Dated: July 2001 Pages: 662-678
Date Published
July 2001
Length
17 pages
Annotation
This study examined the conflict-management styles of homeless male street youth and young males from the general population.
Abstract
Kennedy and Forde (1996) argue that violence has certain patterns that emerge regardless of structural location. The current study used 3 of the 12 scenarios designed by Kennedy and Forde to explore the situational dynamics of aggression by randomly presenting different scenarios to different respondents. One study was conducted as a field survey of young men (older than 16) who lived on the street (n=111) in the downtown core of a Midwestern Canadian city from May through July 1995. The second study drew from a subset of young men from a telephone survey of the general population of males and females 18 years old and older. Immediately after describing a scenario in which the respondents were placed in the position of someone harmed by another person, respondents were asked how upset they would be with the person, using a scale from 0 to 10. Independent variables included the situational aspects of the individuals in the conflict. The findings indicated that the street youths were more likely to demand reparation from individuals they perceived to have harmed them, and they were more willing to use aggression to settle disputes. They also held subcultural values that increased the likelihood they would be sufficiently upset to use aggression in disputes. Findings are discussed in terms of the expectations that actors in different structural locations bring to social interactions. 2 tables, 33 references, and appended descriptions of scenarios used in both studies