Youth violence has become a serious public health issue over the past several decades. Research continues to identify violent-related behavior risk factors linked to many physical and emotional outcomes among youth in diverse communities across local, national and international communities. Some of these risk factors include: low self-esteem, depression, low parental monitoring, helplessness, and low connectedness to school, family, and peers, poor academic engagement, and social anxiety. Although research has examined a range of risk factors, there is a gap in the literature that specifically investigates self-esteem and school connectedness with violent-related behaviors among African American youth. The current study seeks to examine this gap in the literature using secondary pretest data from a larger study that examined the impact of a violence prevention program designed to reduce violent related behaviors in middle school youth in an inner city southeastern school in the United States. The sample consisted of 211 youth, predominately African-American adolescents in the sixth, seventh and eighth grades. Students completed surveys to measure self-reported self-esteem, school connectedness and violent-related behaviors. It was hypothesized that significant negative correlations would be found between self-esteem, school connectedness scores, and self-reported violent-related behaviors. After preliminary analyses, a multiple regression and correlational analysis were used to examine which of these factors or both will be a significant predictor of violent-related behaviors in this sample of youth. Implications and further directions are discussed.
