Childhood Neighborhood Profiles and Their Differential Associations with Childhood Victimization

Background and Purpose:

Childhood victimization, encompassing abuse, neglect, peer victimization, and exposure to community violence, pose significant risks to children's immediate well-being and long-term health trajectories. The communities in which children develop have increasingly been recognized as key contextual factors influencing their exposure to various forms of victimization. However, most studies relying on a variable-centered approach have examined neighborhood characteristics as a single aggregated continuous variable, limiting the ability to capture the complex, multidimensional nature of community contexts. A person-centered approach that identifies distinct neighborhood profiles may provide a deeper understanding of how diverse configurations of neighborhood features relate to childhood victimization. However, empirical research examining how distinct neighborhood profiles are associated with specific forms of childhood victimization remains limited. To address this gap, this study aims to (1) identify distinct types of childhood neighborhood characteristics and (2) examine their differential associations with multiple forms of childhood victimization, including community violence, peer victimization, child abuse and neglect, exposure to domestic violence, and other physical and sexual victimization.

Methods:

Data were drawn from an online survey conducted between 2016 and 2017 across seven U.S. universities and one Canadian university. The final analytic sample comprised 5,190 undergraduate and graduate students. Childhood victimization was assessed using 21 items from the Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire (Finkelhor et al., 2005; α = .85), covering community victimization, peer victimization, child abuse and neglect, exposure to domestic violence, and other physical and sexual victimization. Childhood neighborhood characteristics were measured using a 7-item scale (Alegria et al., 2016; α = .84). Latent class analysis (LCA) with maximum log-likelihood robust estimation was employed to identify distinct neighborhood profiles, with model fit evaluated using AIC, BIC, entropy, and the Lo-Mendell-Rubin adjusted likelihood ratio test. Multiple linear regressions subsequently examined associations between neighborhood profiles and childhood victimization, controlling for age, gender, and race/ethnicity. Analyses were conducted using Jamovi 2.3 and the SnowRMM module.

Results:

LCA identified three distinct childhood neighborhood profiles: (1) positive but with drug risk (63.66%), (2) negative with violence risk (9.09%), and (3) moderate with a lack of care and drug risk (27.24%). Multiple regression analyses revealed that neighborhoods classified as negative with violence risk were significantly associated with peer victimization (β = 0.03, p < .05). No other neighborhood profiles were significantly associated with other forms of childhood victimization.

Conclusions and Implications:

These findings suggest that distinct childhood neighborhood profiles may carry differential risks for specific forms of childhood victimization. Notably, neighborhoods characterized by negative features and violence risk were uniquely linked to peer victimization, underscoring the need for targeted, neighborhood-specific interventions. Practitioners and policymakers can tailor their prevention efforts to specific neighborhood contexts that may be associated with elevated risk for particular forms of victimization. Future research should further examine whether, and how, different neighborhood types shape varied childhood victimization experiences.