Return to Main Menu

Differences exist in how boys, girls experience violence Adolescent girls are more likely than adolescent boys to be assaulted at home, at a residence or at school than in public, and are more likely than boys to be stabbed than shot, according to an article in the August issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, a member of the JAMA family of journals.    Harry Moskowitz, M.D., formerly of New England Medical Center in Boston, and colleagues, reviewed data from two national data bases to determine if there were differences between adolescent boys and girls in the characteristics of those who were injured or died, the severity of their injuries and outcomes, and the type of injury.    Adolescents were defined as individuals aged 12 to 18 years. Violence-related injuries included in the study were those either perpetrated by a stranger or by an intimate partner. The study compared 612 adolescent girls seriously injured because of an assault with 2,656 boys seriously injured because of an assault from 1989 through 1998, and (from a different database) 3,487 girls who died due to a homicide with 17,292 adolescent boys who died due to a homicide from 1990 through 1997.   The authors also extracted information from the databases on pre-existing medical conditions such as mental retardation, learning disabilities, scene of the injury (home, school or public place) and pre-existing psychosocial problems such as violent or physically aggressive behavior    The authors found that girls were more than twice as likely as boys to be stabbed than shot and were also more likely to have pre-existing cognitive or psychosocial impairments than boys. Girls were more likely than boys to be injured in a home, other private dwelling, or a school than in a public place.   According to the authors, few studies have been done on youth violence and girls. “One in three adolescents reports being in a physical fight in the past year. Because of this high prevalence of adolescent violence in the United States, the problem of violence as it affects adolescent girls is a public health problem in its own right,” the authors state.    Other findings of the study are that girls sustained less severe injuries and were only half as likely as boys to be assaulted. Penetrating injuries (stab wounds and gunshot wounds) declined by 28 percent in boys during a 10 year period, but only declined by 6.8 percent in girls over the same period. “Violence affects many teenaged girls in the United States,” the authors state. “We found marked differences between adolescent girls and boys who experienced assaults and homicides.”    “This study demonstrates the need to further refine violence prevention strategies to account for these differences,” the authors conclude. “We may need different prevention strategies for adolescent girls than for adolescent boys. Other studies are needed to better understand the antecedents of adolescent violence and its long-term physical and emotional consequences.”