Community Violence Exposure: Experiences of African American Families

This generic qualitative study investigates the experiences of African American families with community violence and examines protective measures used by families to offset or reduce exposure to community violence. The following research question guided the study: How do African American parents describe their parental monitoring experiences while living with exposure to community violence? Research on community violence exposure (CVE) suggests that the highest exposure occurs in African American communities, resulting in behavioral and mental health issues in youth. The theoretical foundation for this research was general strain theory, which posits that certain characteristics of a community can cause an individual to feel strained, resulting in difficulty achieving valuable goals, loss of positive stimuli, and feelings of anger and frustration. Data were from semi-structured face-to-face interviews with 10 African American parents/guardians on the topic of parental monitoring measures implemented to keep their families safe from CVE. All participants resided in the Southwest part of the United States, were African American or bi-racial, lived in high-violence areas, were over the age of 18, were either single or widowed, had at least one child living in the household, and expressed fear for the safety of their child(ren). Data were analyzed using thematic analysis. During the analysis process, the researcher focused on identifying overarching themes, coding, and developing patterns from the codes. Results indicated that African American parents do use parental monitoring as a safety measure to offset or reduce the effects of CVE. Future research could examine longitudinal trends in parental monitoring during childhood and adolescence. Additional studies should be conducted on parental strain using the qualitative methodology to identify new areas unexplored in the current study