...focus on qualities of an individual victim or perpetrator that predict risk for DV or the effects of DV. However, an ecological framework suggests that an individual is embedded within community and that community factors may be relevant in understanding individual and family functioning (Bronfenbrenner, 1977; Cicchetti & Lynch, 1993). Studies have linked several structural characteristics of neighborhoods to violence within families (Coulton, Korbin, Su, & Chow, 1995), among peers (Bursik & Webb, 1982; Kupersmidt, Griesler, DeRosier, Patterson, & Davis, 1995), and in the community (Morenoff & Sampson, 1997). For example, O'Campo and colleagues (1995) used three census variables--home ownership,

income, and unemployment--to predict women's risk for DV. Moreover, empirical research has linked community violence to family violence, including child maltreatment (Lynch & Cicchetti, 1998) and interparental violence (Richters & Martinez, 1993), and to men who perpetrate DV (Fagan, Stewart, & Hansen, 1983). For example, Fagan et al. (1983) found that 46% of batterers had been previously arrested for other violent crimes and that the most violent batterers were those who were also violent toward strangers, suggesting that severity of DV is associated with perpetration of violence outside the home.

Social contagion theory suggests an explanation by which community violence and women's experiences of DV may be related (Anderson, 1990; Fagan, Wilkinson, & Davies, 2000). The theory assumes that ideas, beliefs, and behaviors relevant to violence are transmitted through a social environment. It suggests that neighborhoods develop their own social norms for violence due to the domination of street codes of justice and social approval and rewards for violent behavior. The social norms developed in these neighborhoods may offer few alternative ways to resolve conflicts other than violence. Thus, the climate of fear that is present in some neighborhoods leads individuals to develop a code of toughness and promotes an ethos that encourages displays of violence.

Researchers have studied the social contagion of violence from a neighborhood-level perspective. Accordingly, the relationships among rates of various types of crime have been examined across people within neighborhoods. These types of studies suggest that violence behaves according to social contagion theory. For example, Rodgers and Rowe (1993) modeled ways in which rates of adolescent criminal behavior and delinquent activities spread through social networks. In addition, studies suggest that this contagion effect appears to cross types of violence. Baron, Murray, and Jaffee (1988) found a cultural spillover effect in communities from rates of legitimized violence to rape, and Koss and Cleveland (1997) argue that rape-supportive environments encourage aggressive male behavior. In other words, violence may act as a contagion in a community, spreading through a community and increasing the rates of violent crime, including violence against women. Thus, those women with personal experiences of DV are likely to live in violent communities. In this study, we hypothesize that both of these factors, the individual experience of DV and the violent crime in the neighborhood, will influence women's psychological functioning.

Psychological Functioning

Research on DV and its consequences for women's psychological functioning are well-documented. As compared to nonvictimized women, victimized women experience increased levels of psychological distress, depression, anxiety, substance use, PTSD, and lower self-esteem (Bogat, Levendosky, Theran, von Eye, & Davidson, 2003; Cascardi & O'Leary, 1992; Houskamp & Foy, 1991; Huth-Bocks, Levendosky, & Bogat, 2002; Kessler, Molnar, Feurer, & Appelbaum, 2001; Levendosky et al., in press; Vitanza, Vogel, & Marshall, 1995).

The relationship between community violence and women's mental health is less clear. Holland (1997), studying low-income mothers, found that both direct exposure to community violence and fear of victimization were associated with high levels of maternal depression. In a small sample, Aisenberg (2001) found that exposure to community violence was associated with high levels of depression, PTSD, and anxiety. Although few studies directly examine women's psychological responses to community violence, many studies with children suggest that community violence results in depression, anxiety, aggression, antisocial behavior, trauma symptoms, and increased fear (Dahlberg, 1998; Drell, Siegel, & Gaensbauer, 1993; Farrell & Bruce, 1997; Gorman-Smith & Tolan, 1998; Kupersmidt et al., 1995; Lynch & Cicchetti, 1998; Martinez & Richters, 1993; McWhirter, 1983; Miller, Wasserman, Neugebauer, Gorman-Smith, & Kamboukos, 1999; Osofsky & Fenichel, 1994; Pynoos, 1993).

Despite the suggested links among community, family, and individual functioning, researchers in the area of DV have not yet examined the relationship between neighborhood-level crime, victims' experiences of DV, and mental health status, and researchers examining the relationship between community violence and violence in the family have not examined individual-level outcomes. This study conducted analyses to examine the relationship between women's exposure to community violence, her experience of domestic violence, and her mental health functioning. Our study expanded this area of research by integrating, through GIS technology, community-level data with individual-level data to determine whether community crime was predictive of individual mental health within a sample of women with different lifetime experiences and severities of DV victimization. This approach makes our study considerably different than most research examining the spatial location of social behavior. That research has been variable-oriented and has focused on defining community characteristics associated with particular crimes (e.g., DV, juvenile acts of delinquency). Our research is person-oriented and asks, using Configural Frequency Analysis (CFA; Lienert & Krauth, 1975; von Eye, 2002), whether the number of participants who evince particular patterns of DV, Community Violence, and Women's Mental Health occur more or less likely than chance. This analysis assumes that the relationships among the variables are not uniform across all the variable values. Thus, the configurations that result describe groups of individuals, not scores on the variables.

METHODS

Participants

Participants were 94 women, a subsample of the 206 women in a longitudinal investigation examining risk and resilience factors for DV,...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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