Susan R. Levy

The relation of perceived neighborhood danger to childhood aggression: A test of mediating mechanisms.

In the current study, two mediational mechanisms, parenting practices and childrens beliefs about aggression, were hypothesized to account for the relationship between perceived neighborhood danger and childhood aggression. Using structural equation modeling, data were analyzed from an inner-city school-based sample of 732 predominantly African American 5th graders. Results suggested that perceived neighborhood danger was associated with strong positive beliefs about aggression, which in turn was associated with high levels of aggression. The hypothesized mediating role of parenting practices (restrictive discipline, parental monitoring, and parental involvement) on the relation between perceived neighborhood danger and child aggression was not supported. However, the current findings suggest that childrens positive beliefs about aggression mediated the relationship between restrictive discipline and aggression. Directions for future research are discussed.

Using Multilevel, Multisource Needs Assessment Data for Planning Community Interventions:

African Americans and Latinos share higher rates of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and diabetes compared with Whites. These diseases have common risk factors that are amenable to primary and secondary prevention. The goal of the Chicago REACH 2010–Lawndale Health Promotion Project is to eliminate disparities related to CVD and diabetes experienced by African Americans and Latinos in two contiguous Chicago neighborhoods using a community-based prevention approach. This article shares findings from the Phase 1 participatory planning process and discusses the implications these findings and lessons learned may have for programs aiming to reduce health disparities in multiethnic communities. The triangulation of data sources from the planning phase enriched interpretation and led to more creative and feasible suggestions for programmatic interventions across the four levels of the ecological framework. Multisource data yielded useful information for program planning and a better understanding of the cultural differences and similarities between African Americans and Latinos.

Developing community health promotion interventions: selecting partners and fostering collaboration.

Although an often desired goal, true partnership between community members and university researchers can be difficult to achieve. Strategies implemented in a diabetes prevention and control program in a Latino community may be effective in overcoming hurdles to collaborative research. The development of selection criteria can be useful for objectively choosing a community organization as a partner agency. The implementation of formal partnership principles is proposed as a strategy for building a successful partnership. Partnership principles are a powerful mechanism to assure ethical relations between collaborators. As a strategy for process evaluation, they can help organize data on the extent to which intent has translated into action. They provide a structure for project stability that can outlast individual commitments and a mechanism to keep project commitment on course and maintain active engagement.

Nutrition-Education Research: An Interdisciplinary Evaluation and Review

An interdisciplinary evaluation approach was developed to analyze and compare school nutrition education programs systematically. Theore tical models from education, preventive medicine, health education and statistical evaluation were applied to 22 studies published between 1968 and 1978 to judge program impact on nutrition knowledge, behavior, and attitudes. Six studies reported XS and SDs for control and experimental groups. Effect sizes, showing average treatment effect in standard devia tion units, were calculated for those six studies. It can be concluded that the more interdisciplinary criteria a study fulfills, the more likely it is to in fluence knowledge, behavior, and attitudes.

Adolescent risk for HIV as viewed by youth and their parents

This study explores generational differences between parents and high-risk adolescents in knowledge and attitudes toward infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). A total of 495 seventh grade students from 5 schools in high-risk communities in the suburbs of a large midwestern city completed a self-administered questionnaire before and after a 2-week education intervention on the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). Their parents completed a parallel survey at pretest. At pretest, students knew less than their parents about HIV infection, but by posttest, students knew more than or at least as much as their parents in several areas.