Risk psychosocial factors related to violent behavior in Salvadorean youth

Abstract

This article is an extract from an expos facto larger study whose aim is to analyze the psychosocial factors associated to aggressive youth behavior in El Salvador. In order to do this, a transactional and retrospective design was used in a probabilistic sample of 3.349 youths (1.708 were female and 1.640 were male). Their average age was 16.47 years old (SD= 1.38). The instruments used [to conduct the research] included the following: the juvenile violence history scale, the contextual and social scale of juvenile violence, the individual factors of youth violence scale, and the aggression questionnaire. The results revealed that the young people most at risk of incurring in violent behaviors are male urban residents who attend a private school. Both individual personality factors and social factors are significantly related to violent behavior in Salvadorean young people.

Entorno, august 2015, issue 59: 35-48