African American Youth Sociology

SURVEY METHODOLOGY

We conducted a study on the young adults of Youth Build Newark who are mainly of African American decent in order to ascertain the effect of their childhood exposure to violence and its impact to their mental state. A total of 26 participants were recruited for the survey but 24 finally participated (14males and 10 females) of age ranging between 16yrs and 24yrs. All participants have good command of English language and the survey issued in English. A two staged survey/questionnaire was given to participants. Stage 1 survey is more instructional and has real life scenarios of sexual abuse, domestic violence, physical abuse by a parent, emotional torture by a parent and a life partner. The stage 2 contains the questions on

The mean age of participants is 20.57 (SD= 2.315) and ranged between 16 and 24yrs. A female participant is married and about 11 of them are single parent. They are all high school drop outs by level of education and 20 gave reasons for school neglect which include: (a) 25% kicked out of school due to “poor conduct”; (b) 10% Did not care so much about school: (c) 5% was involved in fighting and a case of rape; (d) 5% had to do a jail time; (e) 20% dropped out due family issues; (f) 35% are miscellaneous. 1in 2 (47%) agrees to having an antisocial personality while 3 in 5 (56%) ascribes to anger problem which tends to deviate them into violent

55% of participants both male and female have been brutally beaten as a child multiple times and majority of the act was perpetrated by their mum; 30% felt lack of care and neglect from their parents and care givers. The peer and sibling Victimization survey revealed that 95% of the young adults feel safe at school presently. However, 36% of responders have been deliberately hit on their genitals by someone while growing up either as a form of bully or otherwise; 29% of responders confirmed that they were bully victims as kids and 59% had enjoyed being the bully in the past. 15 in 22 (68.1%) have been involved with physical harm to other people while 13 in 24 (54.2%) witnessed other student who bring guns or other form of weapon to school as a child; 7 participants (29.1%) had taken a gun to school in the past (6 male and 1 female). Offensive words and language are common amongst them while growing up as 67% confirms that they experienced such as a kid and even from their life partners. About 4 in 10 females (40%) have experienced or coerced in a form of sexual against their will in the past and the perpetrators are their range from relatives, strangers and even building