Young People’s Experience and Perception in Community Violence: The Case of Kebele 45, Woreda 4, KirkosSub City
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Date
2017-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This research tried to explore and describe young people’s experience and perception in community violence in Woreda 4, Kebele 45 of Kirkos Sub-city. This area was selected because of the prevalence of different kind of violent crimes than the rest of the kebeles in the sub city. The rational of this study is that, there is no research done in the area under study that focuses on young people’s experience and perception in community violence. The objective to achieve in trying to explore and describe young people’s experiences and perceptions in community violence was by identify young individual’s perception about risk factors of community violence and to identify community violence intervention strategies from the perspective of young people. The study used a mixed methods research applied a concurrent design, the selected study design in this study gives a QUALITATIVE-quantitative weight and a concurrent (time-wise) nested mixed design. For the qualitative method used a case study design and the quantitative method used a survey design. For the survey a sample size of 265 was taken from a population of 850. While purposive sampling was used in the process of selecting participants in the qualitative data so as to reach specific group of people such as young people who are victims of different kinds of crimes and young people that are residents of the area in general. A maximum of 7 participants was taken for the collection qualitative data. For the qualitative study, the data collection techniques used include; in-depth interviews with participant, key-informant interviews, FGD and observation. A survey questionnaire was designed and employed to collect quantitative data. A concurrent mixed analysis was utilized to analyze the qualitative and quantitative data. The result confirmed that most of the young people in the community have unstable economic status. Unemployment was found to be the major factor which leads the young people to commit violent acts. Majority of the respondents claimed that victims prefer to report their cases relatives, friends and significant others rather than reporting to the police. Four areas of risk factors of community violence identified in this research include community factors, family factors, and relationships with peers, and personal characteristics.The study revealed that in majority of the cases perpetrators are peers of the victims. Several personal level emotional responses were identified by young people as outcomes of community violence. In addition to the personal level emotional responses, five community level outcomes were documented. The study also revealed seven key areas for intervention. In conclusion unemployment is one of the leading problems in the community. Young people in the community have different unmet needs and are particularly at risk of participating in problem behaviors. Young people who have the most severe unmet needs in their lives are particularly in jeopardy of participating in violent behavior. The issue of community violence in many occasions, the responsibility, resides on immediate families, the community and the society at large. Even though, some of the youth accept on the progress, most of them believe that there could have been a better result if the government works in closer ties with them. Hence, more work should be done in this regard to improve the situation. Based on the finding this study recommends that policies and programs be devised and implemented by concerned organizations, more research should be done in regards to tackling unemployment in the area and education and training should be done to address employment opportunities and concealing overcoming their addictions to different substances.
Key Words: Young people, community violence
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Keywords
Young People; Community Violence