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Mapping Activity Patterns to Quantify Risk of Violent Assault in Urban Environments
- Source :
- Epidemiology (Cambridge, Mass.)
- Publication Year :
- 2015
-
Abstract
- Supplemental Digital Content is available in the text.<br />Background: We collected detailed activity paths of urban youth to investigate the dynamic interplay between their lived experiences, time spent in different environments, and risk of violent assault. Methods: We mapped activity paths of 10- to 24-year-olds, including 143 assault patients shot with a firearm, 206 assault patients injured with other types of weapons, and 283 community controls, creating a step-by-step mapped record of how, when, where, and with whom they spent time over a full day from waking up until going to bed or being assaulted. Case–control analyses compared cases with time-matched controls to identify risk factors for assault. Case-crossover analyses compared cases at the time of assault with themselves earlier in the day to investigate whether exposure increases acted to the trigger assault. Results: Gunshot assault risks included being alone (odds ratio [OR] = 1.6, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.3, 1.9) and were lower in areas with high neighbor connectedness (OR = 0.7, 95% CI = 0.6, 0.8). Acquiring a gun (OR = 1.4, 95% CI = 1.1, 1.6) and entering areas with more vacancy, violence, and vandalism (OR = 1.7, 95% CI = 1.1, 2.7) appeared to trigger the risk of getting shot shortly thereafter. Nongunshot assault risks included being in areas with recreation centers (OR = 1.2, 95% CI = 1.1, 1.4). Entering an area with higher truancy (OR = 1.6, 95% CI = 1.1, 2.5) and more vacancy, violence, and vandalism appeared to trigger the risk of nongunshot assault. Risks varied by age group. Conclusions: We achieved a large-scale study of the activities of many boys, adolescents, and young men that systematically documented their experiences and empirically quantified risks for violence. Working at a temporal and spatial scale that is relevant to the dynamics of this phenomenon gave novel insights into triggers for violent assault.
- Subjects :
- Male
Adolescent
Urban Population
Epidemiology
Poison control
Geographic Mapping
Violence
01 natural sciences
Suicide prevention
Risk Assessment
Occupational safety and health
03 medical and health sciences
Young Adult
0302 clinical medicine
Residence Characteristics
Risk Factors
Injury prevention
Humans
Human Activities
030212 general & internal medicine
0101 mathematics
Child
Recreation
Philadelphia
010102 general mathematics
Human factors and ergonomics
Social Epidemiology
Case-Control Studies
Space-Time Clustering
ComputingMethodologies_DOCUMENTANDTEXTPROCESSING
Truancy
Risk assessment
Psychology
Factor Analysis, Statistical
Demography
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 15315487
- Volume :
- 27
- Issue :
- 1
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Epidemiology (Cambridge, Mass.)
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....d60ad8c93ee6f192ec7fd7bf36f9b0f1