COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Despite the prevalence of violence in inner-city neighborhoods, elementary school children living there seem to have favorable views of at least parts of their community, a new study suggests.
A study of 379 children at a Columbus public elementary school showed that most kids found places they considered safe, quiet, and beautiful in a community they sometimes perceived as dangerous, dirty and noisy.
"Some of these kids were exposed to violence on a daily basis: shootings in parking lots of a school, shootings in their backyards," said Barbara Polivka, assistant professor of nursing at Ohio State University. "Even so, the kids saw a lot of good in their neighborhood."
Polivka and her colleagues found that fewer than one out of three elementary school students (28 percent) considered their community a dangerous place, while nearly half (46 percent) felt safe at home. The research appears in a recent issue of the journal Public Health Nursing.
The study was conducted as part of a community-based violence prevention program that the researchers helped implement at the Columbus school. The school was situated in a low-income housing development. The area surrounding the school was 89 percent black and 52 percent of the population was below the poverty level.
For this study, the researchers asked children in grades K-5 to describe in words or pictures how they felt about their neighborhood. The children were asked to associate words like beautiful, friendly, helpful, quiet, safe, dirty, noisy, dangerous, sad and ugly with places and things in their neighborhood.
"It's difficult for kids to assign meaning to places and events unless they have experienced them," Polivka said. "It was apparent that children had been exposed to violence either in their homes or their neighborhoods."
While 28 percent associated "danger" with their community, only 5 percent connected danger with their homes and 1 percent considered school dangerous. Fourth and fifth graders viewed their neighborhoods as dangerous more often (38 percent) than did second and third graders (15 percent). About 39 percent of the children surveyed described their homes as peaceful, while 17 percent described their schools that way.
As part of this research, Polivka and her colleagues started a community violence prevention coalition, which used the data collected during the study to implement various anti-violence programs. The coalition helped educate students and teachers about gangs. It also sponsored a career day for fifth grade students and encouraged the school to use incentive programs to improve grades and attendance.
Polivka said most kids responded positively to these incentives. "While the kids knew about the negative stuff in their neighborhood, they also saw the positive," Polivka said."The kids cared about their community."
Co-authors were Mariann Lovell, a doctoral candidate in the College of Nursing at Ohio State and Barbara Smith, professor of nursing at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Grants from the United Way of Franklin County and the Columbus Foundation helped fund the research.
Contact: Barbara Polivka, (614) 292-4902;
Polivka.1@osu.edu
Written by Holly Wagner, (614) 292-8310;
Wagner.235@osu.edu
Journal
Public Health Nursing