The CDC's mentored research scientist awards are designed to help promising young investigators become experts in a particular field. Dr. Fabio's research project titled, "Why Some Generations Are More Violent Than Others A Contextual Model for Understanding Crime Trends," seeks to determine the role of social influence on violence in adolescents over time and will draw primary data from the Pittsburgh Youth Study.
"I am honored to receive this award. My hope is that through this research, we will be able to better identify both analytical and theoretical techniques in order to provide effective problem solving strategies with regard to youth violence," said Dr. Fabio.
Using data from the Pittsburgh Youth Study -- a study of 1,517 inner-city boys from Pittsburgh, between the ages of 7 and 25 to better understand how and why boys get involved in delinquent behaviors -- Dr. Fabio will look at two age groups from the study; those 7 years old at the beginning of the study in 1987, and those aged 13 years at the beginning of the study.
The older group reported higher rates of violence than the younger group throughout the study. The primary question that Dr. Fabio and his colleagues plan to answer is whether this difference is due to some inherent distinction between the groups, or to some special or cultural
factor such as poor economy, increased gang participation or drug dealing that played a greater risk during the time that the older group was growing up. Understanding these differences may help to predict future increase in violence.
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3-Nov-2004