Peer violence perpetration and victimization are the most common types of violence among youths (Swahn et al., 2008). This study determined the associations between peer violence attitudes and involvement in peer violence perpetration and peer violence victimization among boys and girls in high-risk urban community. Analyses were based on data from the 2004 Youth Violence Survey, administered to over 80% of public school students in grades 7, 9, 11, and 12 (N = 4131) in a high-risk urban community. Chi-square and logistic regression analyses were conducted to test the associations between attitudes and involvement in violent behaviors after controlling for demographic characteristics and potential confounders (e.g., child maltreatment, substance use, weapon carrying, and efficacy to avoid violence). Results show that among all youths, attitudes supporting boys hitting boys significantly increased the odds of peer violence perpetration (AOR: 1.48; 95% CI = 1.13, 1.95). However, stratified analyses for boys and girls show that attitudes supporting boys hitting boys increased the odds of peer violence perpetration for girls only (AOR: 1.57; 95% CI = 1.04, 2.37). The findings demonstrate associations between attitudes and actual involvement in violent behaviors, but they need to be further explored. Additional research is needed to determine how attitude modifications can be incorporated into youth violence prevention programs.

Peer and dating violence perpetration and victimization are common experiences placing adolescents at-risk for maladaptive outcomes, yet little research has focused on specific problematic situations associated with these types of violence and other related risk-taking behaviors. Further, prevention programs have typically focused on changing beliefs, attitudes, and skill-deficits, with little attention to adolescents’ motivations or perceptions of costs and benefits associated with risky situations, despite support for this type of research in other health-related fields (e.g., substance abuse, behavioral medicine). The current study assessed adolescents’ perceptions of potential positive and negative outcomes associated with risky dating and peer situations, many of which may increase youths’ risks for violence perpetration or victimization. Interviews were conducted with 82 predominantly African American adolescents living in an urban setting. At the conclusion of qualitative coding, 17 and 13 themes were identified for risky dating and peer situations, respectively. Content within these themes included potential positive and negative outcomes and associated processes and contextual factors identified by youth, across topics such as aggression, victimization, and other risks for physical or psychological harm; interpersonal and intrapersonal processes associated with dating and peer relationships (e.g., communication, emotion, respect, pressure); and more concrete costs and benefits for youth (e.g., gain or loss of financial or material goods, opportunities for fun things to do). This research has important implications for improving the ecological relevance and credibility of youth violence prevention programs, and the discussion of decisional balances of potential costs and benefits may represent important targets for prevention programs.

According to the Federal Centre for Health Education, over 50 % of all adolescents and young adults in Germany have experienced non-physical sexualized violence. Although it has been studied, reasons for committing sexual violence are not so obvious and variables such as socioeconomic status have been found not to be valid predictors of this kind of deviant behaviour. Studies show that girls are mainly victimized by men and men are equally victimized by both genders. Furthermore, a cognizance is that nowadays adolescents get their information on how to behave in sexual acts from the internet. Women are mainly using advice pages and consulting offers whereas men in comparison are using internet pages like Wikipedia or watching porn. The aim of the current study is to find some criminological explanatory approaches to attitudes to sexuality and violence among adolescents and young adults. The main findings are that a person who is inclined to violence in general and lives in an environment where sexual violence often occurs is more likely to have the attitude that violence as a component of sexual acts is not considered a boundary violation.  Likewise, the likelihood increases to see violence as part of sexual acts not as a violation of boundaries if the attitude is in favor of consuming pornographic material in groups.

Cette recherche interroge, dans une perspective pragmatique, la teneur des disputes entre pairs dans les cours de récréation à l'école élémentaire. Le régime de dispute en violence (Boltanski, 1990), caractérisé par des épreuves de force engageant exclusivement la force des personnes constitue le pivot de notre recherche. Comment et sous quelles conditions les interactions enfantines basculent-elles dans le régime de dispute en violence ou inversement sortent-elles de ce régime ? A l'aide d'une méthodologie fondée sur une approche ethnographique (observations et entretiens semi-scénarisés) et des questionnaires soumis aux écoliers, nous avons été en mesure de caractériser les formes émergentes de ce régime de dispute en violence, révélant ainsi une violence protéiforme ne se limitant pas au seul phénomène du harcèlement. Nous avons démontré que les écoliers recourent à des normes corporelles spécifiques et à des principes issus du monde domestique et du monde civique en vue de stabiliser l'ordre social en récréation et peuvent, sous certaines conditions, employer la violence comme un dispositif visant à contrecarrer les menaces pesant sur ces normes et principes. La compétence à s'extraire du régime de violence est apparue fortement corrélée aux dispositifs pédagogiques en place dans les écoles et à la grandeur que les élèves accordent aux enseignants ainsi qu'aux justifications et dispositifs que ces derniers emploient. La grandeur accordée à ces dispositifs et à la figure enseignante s'est enfin révélée, au fil de l'analyse comme étant étroitement imbriquée à la grandeur politique et civique que les enseignants accordent à l'écolier. / This sociological research deals with arguments among children in the school playground at primary school and follows a pragmatic sociological approach. The violent argument regime (Boltanski, 1990), is characterised by power struggles, that exclusively involves people strenght, without any principles. This violent argument regime is the centre of this research. How, and under which conditions peer interactions can get out of that regime? Using a methodology built on an ethnographic approach (observations and interviews based on scenarios) and on questionnaries to pupils, we've been able to characterise the emerging forms of the violent regime, and we showed the existence of a multifaceted violence at elementary school that can't be reduced merely to schoolbullying : this analysis's questionning the psychological approach of schoolbullying at school and discards the portraits of pupils who are either a persecutor or a victim : they can be both of them. Furthermore, pupils use physical norms and principles of justice that come from the domestic and the civic spheres in order to regulate the social order in the school playground and to get out of the violent regime. However, they can also, in the name of those principles, use violence as a device which enable them to stem the threats to those same principles. Moreover, the pupils ability to get out of the violence regime is linked to the teaching devices in the schools and to pupils perception of the teachers and the regulations that teachers use – or don't use. Some teaching devices could help pupils to get out of the violent argument regime and could restructure pupils principles and norms of justice.