Preschool Children and Violence: Exposure and Victimization Levels (original) (raw)

Children's chronic exposure to violence negatively affects their social development even though the level of violence is low. In the available literature, implementing prevention programs at early ages is suggested due to being more effective and economic. Nevertheless, most of the violence prevention programs target adolescents. Therefore, in this study, violence exposure levels of 62 children (3-6 ages) are examined through Violence Exposure Scale (VEX-Violence Exposure Scale; Fox and Leavitt, 1995). The adapted version of VEX is administered through individual interviews. The results indicated that at all settings (home, school, and neighborhood) preschool children exposed to mild violence more than severe violence and almost all of the reported severe violence incidents occurred in the neighborhood setting. SUMMARY Purpose and significance: On preventing youth violence, repeated interventions at different ages especially at early ages, found to be effective. Effective preventive interventions for all age groups can only be prepared after defining the prevalence levels of violent events, the developmental needs of children, and culture specific issues. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to reveal the violence exposure levels (mild-severe) of preschool children (age 3-6). This study is important because the preschoolers' violence exposure level has not been studied in our country before. Methods: The participants of this study were the students (n=80) of two preschools located in Ankara. However, some children (n=18) could not complete the interview due to several reasons (they are not mature enough; they have mixed reality with imaginary situations, etc.). Sixty two (62) of the students completed the interview, of these 54.8% were girls (n=34), and 45.2% were boys (n=28). The mean age was 4.5 (SD=1.14). In order to conduct the interviews with children, permission letters were granted from the school managers and the parents of the children. The appointments of the interviews were arranged previously and 15-20 minute-interviews conducted with each child afterwards. Results: The results yielded that the preschool children were exposed to quite amount of mild violence at home, at school and in the neighborhood. Almost all of the severe violence events that subjects reported took place at the neighborhood setting. The violence exposure experiences of children between the ages of 3 to 6 found to be very high and similar to the literature (Kapçı, 2004; Olweus, 1993; Pekel, 2004). The violence exposure levels of boys were found to be higher than girls. Discussion and Conclusions: This current study revealed that preschool children were exposed to mild violence at different settings. Even though the violence is mild and the exposure level of children is low, continuous exposure to violence might traumatize children. Therefore, understanding preschool children's violence exposure levels and not excluding them from prevention interventions is important. The researchers generally ignore the preschool age group when studying violence exposure due to either underestimating small children's experiences related to violence or the difficulty of working with small children. However, this study demonstrates that it is possible to measure the experiences of preschool children if appropriate measurement tools are used.