Youthful Violence: Problems and Prospects

This is a study of 758 adolescents, aged 13 to 18 years, randomly selected from two public high schools in the South. The purpose is to examine the relative relationships between several predictors and violence in two age groups (ages 15 and younger versus 16 and older), and to investigate interactions between several of the predictors within these age groups. As hypothesized, there are differences in which factors predict violence according to age, and interactions between these predictors also differ between the two age groups. The social work practice implications of these findings are discussed.