Luis Fernando Duque

The Study of Youth Resilience Across Cultures: Lessons from a Pilot Study of Measurement Development

Resilience researchers from diverse disciplines and cultural settings face formidable challenges in conceptualizing and developing standardized metrics of resilience that are representative of adolescent and young adult experiences across cultures. We discuss these issues using the case example of a pilot study involving researchers in 14 sites in 11 countries. The goal of the International Resilience Project was to develop a culturally and contextually relevant measure of youth resilience, the Child and Youth Resilience Measure (CYRM). Cultural sensitivity and an iterative research design introduced to the study a number of problems that future studies of resilience will need to address: ambiguity in the definition of positive outcomes; a lack of predictability of models across cultures; and measurement design challenges.

The Victim-Perpetrator Overlap and Routine Activities Results From a Cross-Sectional Study in Bogotá, Colombia

The overlap between the populations of victims and perpetrators, as well as the differences between victims who are perpetrators and those who are not, are explored using data from a cross-sectional survey of violence among a random sample (n = 3,007) of the general population in Bogotá, Colombia. The findings show that about a third of the population have been both a victim and perpetrator of violence, whereas another third have been only victims. Victims who have not been perpetrators differ in their demographic profile and routine activities from those who have but tend to be similar to the general population. Given the large overlap between victims and perpetrators, interventions used to reduce aggression and offending might also have an impact on victimization in this population. Risk factors different from those hypothesized in the routine activities theory among victims who are not perpetrators of violence need to be explored.

Reducing Violence by Transforming Neighborhoods: A Natural Experiment in Medellín, Colombia

Neighborhood-level interventions provide an opportunity to better understand the impact that neighborhoods have on health. In 2004, municipal authorities in Medellín, Colombia, built a public transit system to connect isolated low-income neighborhoods to the citys urban center. Transit-oriented development was accompanied by municipal investment in neighborhood infrastructure. In this study, the authors examined the effects of this exogenous change in the built environment on violence. Neighborhood conditions and violence were assessed in intervention neighborhoods (n = 25) and comparable control neighborhoods (n = 23) before (2003) and after (2008) completion of the transit project, using a longitudinal sample of 466 residents and homicide records from the Office of the Public Prosecutor. Baseline differences between these groups were of the same magnitude as random assignment of neighborhoods would have generated, and differences that remained after propensity score matching closely resembled imbalances produced by paired randomization. Permutation tests were used to estimate differential change in the outcomes of interest in intervention neighborhoods versus control neighborhoods. The decline in the homicide rate was 66% greater in intervention neighborhoods than in control neighborhoods (rate ratio = 0.33, 95% confidence interval: 0.18, 0.61), and resident reports of violence decreased 75% more in intervention neighborhoods (odds ratio = 0.25, 95% confidence interval 0.11, 0.67). These results show that interventions in neighborhood physical infrastructure can reduce violence.

Cross sectional survey of perpetrators, victims, and witnesses of violence in Bogotá, Colombia

Objectives: To establish the prevalence and distribution of witnesses, victims, and perpetrators of different types of violence in the general population and the proportion of victims consulting health services or reporting the incident to authorities. Methods: Cross sectional survey of a random sample of 3007 inhabitants between the ages of 15 and 60 in the city of Bogotá, Colombia, in 1997, based on a face to face interview. Results: Age adjusted past year prevalence of witnesses, victims, and perpetrators of physical aggression was 61%, 27%, and 27%, respectively, while lifetime prevalence of witnesses, victims, and perpetrators of assault with a weapon in this population reached 70%, 55%, and 5.8%. Between 11% and 67% of the victims consulted a health service and less than 32% reported the incident to an authority. Those involved in most types of physical violence tended to be young, male, from lower middle social classes, with some degree of secondary education, and single or divorced. Conclusions: Prevalence of witnesses and victims of violence in this sample appears to be high, while perpetrators constitute a small proportion. Violence is not equally distributed throughout the population suggesting the possibility of identifying a population at higher risk for the development of intervention programmes.

Lecciones del programa de prevención temprana de la violencia, Medellín, Colombia

OBJETIVO: Describir las caracteristicas y la evolucion del Programa de Prevencion Temprana de la Violencia del Municipio de Medellin, Colombia, y evaluar los resultados de la primera etapa tres anos despues de su implementacion. METODOS: Se llevo a cabo un analisis anterior (ano 2001) y posterior (ano 2004) de cinco variables -sintomas de agresion directa, sintomas de agresion indirecta, sintomas de prosocialidad y rendimiento escolar- en una muestra por conveniencia de 339 ninos y sus familias que habian participado en el programa. RESULTADOS: Se evidenciaron varios efectos positivos del programa. Se observo una disminucion de los sintomas de agresion directa y de los de agresion indirecta, pero en este ultimo caso solo en ninas y en mayores de 12 anos. Se evidencio asimismo un aumento en la prosocialidad en ninos de todas las edades y de ambos sexos, incluso en los que presentaban menor grado de prosocialidad en 2001. Tambien se observo en todo el grupo una mejora del rendimiento escolar. Estos resultados pueden haber sido afectados por algunas modificaciones en la implementacion del programa de prevencion y por la gran peligrosidad del barrio, que ocasiono una disminucion de la frecuencia de las visitas domiciliarias a las familias. CONCLUSIONES: El programa parece tener efectos preventivos, puesto que se observa una disminucion de la agresion directa en los ninos con mayor nivel de agresion, y un efecto protector en el aumento de la prosocialidad en los ninos menos agresivos.

Violence witnessing, perpetrating and victimization in medellin, Colombia: a random population survey

BackgroundThe burden of injury from violence and the costs attributable to violence are extremely high in Colombia. Despite a dramatic decline in homicides over the last ten years, homicide rate in Medellin, Colombia second largest city continues to rank among the highest of cities in Latin America. This study aims to estimate the prevalence and distribution of witnesses, victims and perpetrators of different forms of interpersonal violence in a representative sample of the general population in Medellin in 2007.MethodsA face-to-face survey was carried out on a random selected, non-institutionalized population aged 12 to 60 years, with a response rate of 91% yielding 2,095 interview responses.ResultsWe present the rates of prevalence for having been a witness, victim, or perpetrator for different forms of violence standardized using the WHO truncated population pyramid to allow for cross-national comparison. We also present data on verbal aggression, fraud and deception, yelling and heavy pranks, unarmed aggression during last year, and armed threat, other severe threats, robbery, armed physical aggression, and sexual aggression during the lifetime, by age, sex, marital and socioeconomic status, and education. Men reported the highest prevalence of being victims, perpetrators and witnesses in all forms of violence, except for robbery and sexual violence. The number of victims per perpetrator was positively correlated with the severity of the type of violence. The highest victimization proportions over the previous twelve months occurred among minors. Perpetrators are typically young unmarried males from lower socio-economic strata.ConclusionsDue to very low proportion of victimization report to authorities, periodic surveys should be included in systems for epidemiological monitoring of violence, not only of victimization but also for perpetrators. Victimization information allows quantifying the magnitude of different forms of violence, while data on factors associated with aggression and perpetrators are necessary to estimate risk and protective factors that are essential to sound policies for violence prevention formulation.

Fermion mass hierarchy and nonhierarchical mass ratios in SU(5)xU(1){sub F}

We consider a SU(5)xU(1){sub F} grand unified theory (GUT)-flavor model in which the number of effects that determine the charged fermions Yukawa matrices is much larger than the number of observables, resulting in a hierarchical fermion spectrum with no particular regularities. The GUT-flavor symmetry is broken by flavons in the adjoint of SU(5), realizing a variant of the Froggatt-Nielsen mechanism that gives rise to a large number of effective operators. By assuming a common mass for the heavy fields and universality of the fundamental Yukawa couplings, we reduce the number of free parameters to one. The observed fermion mass spectrum is reproduced thanks to selection rules that discriminate among various contributions. Bottom-tau Yukawa unification is preserved at leading order, but there is no unification for the first two families. Interestingly, U(1){sub F} charges alone do not determine the hierarchy, and can only give upper bounds on the parametric suppression of the Yukawa operators.

Tolerancia al quebrantamiento de la norma en el area metropolitana de Medellín, Colombia

Abstract: This article analyzes the tolerance to the breaches of the norm in Medellin and municipalities in Metropolitan Area. For this purpose, we use data from the study about magnitude, distribution and factors associated with violence in Metropolitan Area of Medellin that was conducted in 2004 to ten of its municipalities. In this study was estimated the magnitude of this important risk factor for violence on society. Results emphasize that the standardized indicators of anomie and legitimacy to the breach of the rule are surprisingly high in all municipalities in the Metropolitan Area of Medellin, for both men and women, although most prevalent among men, children and youth. Sociological arguments are presented to provide elements that explain the presence and characteristics of this phenomenon and the factors that motivate a person to cause an incident that contributes to this phenomenon. Among the explanatory values are mentioned both inadequate and lack of certain cultural values, the result of sociocultural constraints and economic situation as individual rationality.

Addressing Youth Violence and Aggression in Colombia: Examining a Community-Wide Prevention Initiative

Set in the Aburra Valley of the Colombian Andes, the Metropolitan Area of Medellin comprises 10 municipalities and 4.6 million inhabitants. As elsewhere in Colombia, violence has been a significant public health problem for the past two decades (Duque, 2000b; Franco, 2003). In order to promote nonviolence among children and adolescents, the Mede11in Early Prevention of Aggression Program (MEPAP) was initiated in 2001. MEPAP was part of a larger program, the Medellin Civic Coexistence Program, funded by the Medellin municipality and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). This larger program had five objectives: (1) to prevent aggressive behavior among children and youth; (2) to strengthen justice mechanisms; (3) to develop the mass media as promoters of citizenship and civil coexistence; (4) to observe and monitor occurrences of violence; and (5) to ensure community ownership of the program. Its design was directed by one of this chapter’s authors, L. F. Duque, following consultations with 80 public, private, and community institutions and more than 500 individual local leaders. These consultations had identified violence as one of the four main obstacles hindering the economic development of Medellin (Duque, 2000a). Participants involved in the consultations recommended violence prevention initiatives at the local and national levels of government.

Predicting Resilient Adolescents and Youths: Validation of a Screening Test in Colombia

Background: This article presents the validation of the Child and Youth Resilience Measure-58 (CYRM-58) in the Colombian context and in Spanish language. Methods: CYRM-58 has 58 questions and was developed by an international team of researchers coordinated by the Resilience Research Centre (Dalhousie University, Canada). Simplified CYRM Colombia is a test that uses 7 questions of CYRM-58; for its validation we tested reproducibility in 22 persons aged 14 to 23 years. Results: We validated content and internal consistency in 39 resilients, 43 youth with deviant behaviors, and 66 controls matched by age and sex. We estimated internal consistency by non-parametric factorial analysis, and we assessed content validity by means of the Mann-Whitney test, bootstrap regression and logistic regression. The reproducibility was found to be in the range of 75–86%. Correlation between measurements was 75%. Conclusion: The best predictive model or Simplified CYRM Colombia was found to have seven questions (sensitivity = 96%, specificity = 76%, power = 80%).