title: Considering a decision-making approach to youth violence prevention programs.
abstract: The unfortunate exception to a general downturn in violent crime involves an upsurge in violence among youth. Violence often results when minor confrontations escalate. As school violence increasingly has become widespread, schools have become the location of many violence prevention efforts, few of which have been evaluated adequately. This paper focuses on enhancing decision-making skills as one approach to increase adolescents' ability to manage interpersonal violence. Adolescents can be considered fairly skilled decision-makers and their unique perspective must be considered in development of effective intervention programs. Data from a pilot study were examined for insights about adolescents' ability to make decisions in situations of interpersonal conflict.
authors.affiliation: Prevention Research Branch, National Institute of Child Health and Development, National Institutes of Health, Rockville MD 20892, USA.
authors.forename: D L
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: Haynie
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Alexander
authors.forename: S R
authors.initials: SR
authors.lastname: Walters
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior; D002648:Child; D002652:Child Behavior; D006801:Humans; D008396:Maryland; D010379:Peer Group; D010865:Pilot Projects; D011340:Problem Solving; D016730:Program Development / Q000379:methods*; D012572:School Health Services; D012945:Social Values; D014481:United States; D014505:Urban Population