Reply

To the Editor:

Brooks comments on risk factors that we did not explore that also might play some role in youth violence. Naturally, in any single analysis, it is difficult to consider all risk factors, although we explored a number that had been identified as important in past research.

Looking into the influence of schools may bear some fruit, although we caution that it is too early to consider the influence of schools as “causal” as opposed to a correlational, predictive relationship. Although youth in low-functioning schools indeed have higher rates of violent behavior, this may reflect wider social influences of poverty, neighborhoods, and families.

Similarly, we agree that further explorations of dating violence risk factors are important. Our current sample ranged in age from 10 to 14 years; although we do not doubt that some of these youth were dating, there would not have been sufficient variance among such a young cohort to fully elucidate risk factors for dating violence. However, because it is our intention to follow this cohort longitudinally, examining dating violence will be a facet of future evaluations.

Finally, we fully agree that interactions among youth and their social ecology can have a strong influence on antisocial outcomes—indeed, this was a premise of our original article. We do make two cautionary remarks, however. First, the influence of any single risk factor tends to be very small. It is important to focus on the “big picture,” examining multiple risk factors in concurrence. Small influences by single risk factors may turn out to be explained fully by other larger risk factors. Indeed, that appears to be the case for such variables as media violence exposure. Second, we note the paucity of research examining genetic influences and social influences in well-designed multivariate analyses. Given the strength of research linking genetics to violent behavior,1 it is crucially important that future studies incorporate genetic and social variables together. Only then will we have a full picture of the influences on youth violence.