Ecological models focus on multiple levels of influence and result in a comprehensive understanding of human behavior. Research has shown that violence permeates every level of our environment and society, from effects on the individual and family to violence in neighborhoods, communities, and the broader culture. Until recently, researchers investigated unique forms of violence and outcomes, such as child abuse or intimate partner violence, out of the context of the multiple traumas that individuals frequently encounter. Investigators have begun studying exposure to multiple forms of violence and the exponential effects of these experiences on individuals’ health and wellbeing. Researchers know, for example, that child abuse and intimate partner violence overlap in approximately 40% of cases and that siblings in child-abusing families are at risk for abuse themselves. Studies show that interadult violence is replicated in the earliest of social relationships, those of siblings. Further, in cases of childhood sexual abuse, research has shown that violent revictimization in adulthood is high. In addition, researchers know that violence is more likely to occur in certain contexts. For example, children who are the victims of violence are generally more likely to live in urban and poor neighborhoods. Further, by the time the average child graduates from elementary school he or she will have witnessed thousands of murders and tens of thousands of vicarious acts of violence on television, and poor children report the highest exposure.
Thus, it is clear that violence can and does impact individuals at any age, in any environment, and often co-occurs in various forms. However, the broad range of potential influences on violence exposure and perpetration is difficult to organize and assess. One way of capturing the complex array of violent acts and interactive effects is with an ecological model that illustrates influences that occur at different levels of an individual’s environment.
Defining an Ecological Schema
In 1968 Edgar Auerswald first described the use of an ecological approach to understanding family processes by connecting families to the broader community in which they were embedded. Around the same time, Roger Barker described the influence of physical surroundings and social settings on individual behavior. It was Uri Bronfenbrenner, however, who in 1979 first proposed a four-level ecological schema used to illustrate the complex layers of factors found to influence and explain variations in individual behavior. He organized factors as existing within the individual and the family at the microsystem level, which is posited to be surrounded by the mesosystem, or the interrelationships between such places as the school and home or the various components of the microsystem. These systems are nested within the exosystem, which consists of the community setting in which the family is embedded. Finally, these three systems are encompassed by the macrosystem, which is the most distal to the individual and made up of the broader culture’s norms, rules, expectations, and values. Insofar as these levels are nested, they are considered to have transactional qualities—that is, factors at one level can influence, shape, or constrain factors at another level.
Adding the Temporal Dimension to the Ecology
Time, or the chronosystem, is a dimension that was added to the model by Bronfenbrenner in 1986. Here, the developmental influence of the related risk and protective factors found at each contextual level can be tracked over the course of an individual’s life.
The ecological model has been used to explain processes related to single problems, such as substance abuse or child maltreatment. When applied to violence, this model allows us to examine the issues of multiple victimizations and continuity, as it allows us to identify those individuals whose early exposure to violence and maltreatment puts them at risk for revictimization or perpetration in childhood and beyond. Further, by using this model, we can account for what contributes to discontinuous effects; for example, where some children either show no negative effects early on but develop serious problems later in life—the so-called sleeper effects—or show initial problems and recover, only to exhibit negative outcomes at a later date.
The Ecological Model of Violence
Using ecological systems theory, as well as concepts from the field of developmental psychopathology, a comprehensive model can be adapted to account for the varied, intertwined, and transactional forces that shape the lives of individuals who either are responsible for or have been exposed to violence and maltreatment. The model is shown in Figure 1.
Example of Ecological Effects on Children Exposed To Family Violence
To illustrate, a father may have been exposed to violence between his parents when he was growing up. His own child witnesses similar abuse of his mother by his father. This young child may be at risk for later antisociality or delinquency. However, the probability of a delinquent outcome can be reduced or enhanced depending on the availability of resources for the family or community. The child’s young age is an individual-level risk factor that may be countervailed at the contextual level of the family (e.g., having a parent who is not depressed, living in a family with few children, and/or having an empathic mother). Given such protective factors, the child can learn other ways of handling conflict or, perhaps, can get enough attention, information, and support to better cope with the violence.
Figure 1. Ecosytem
However, if the immediate environmental context situates the family in a poor neighborhood with few resources and high exposure to community violence, then the buffering effects provided by the mother’s positive parenting may be diminished or eliminated. In this case, the child may not have access to programs in the school or community; the mother may not be able to use a battered women’s shelter; the child may witness additional acts of violence in the community—some, perhaps, committed against him or his friends. Community resources and initiatives that can provide help for such children are influenced by the broader culture’s beliefs in, and support for, efforts to reduce such violence. These resources at the broadest social level, or lack thereof, can constrain the range of available options for the family in a given neighborhood. Thus, despite the protective features of the home, the risk elements at play in the community may overwhelm the child, who may begin to use violent tactics in interpersonal situations. When such violence is reinforced by role modeling in television and other media, the expectation that violence is an appropriate response to challenges or stress may be enhanced. Difficulties in social relationships, violence in dating relationships, or delinquency and eventual incarceration may follow.
The model also can be used to explain resilient coping in those whose exposure to violence is mitigated by protective features at all levels of the environment and does not lead to unhealthy outcomes. Thus, the model can offer a detailed and complex picture of ways in which features of the individual, family, neighborhood, community, and culture can contribute to more healthy trajectories for those exposed to violence.
Utility of the Ecological Model
The ecological model permits appreciation of how multiple forms of violence in the life of an individual may add up, coalesce, and interact. With this information we can identify individuals whose early exposure to violence and maltreatment may lead them into trouble in adolescence and adulthood. Ideally, interventions can be designed for each level of the ecological system to reduce the salience of violence in the culture, in the media, in schools and neighborhoods, and finally, in the family.
Testing Ecological Models in Research
There is a need to continue to refine the study of violence as a serious developmental risk to children, particularly with studies that address violence early in the life of the child. In addition, studies should assess factors that serve to protect some children from the deleterious consequences of exposure to violence. Yet, there is no study that puts all forms of violence and related risk and protective factors together in accounting for the mental health, physical development, and social competence of young children. However, the national research bodies have called for precisely this type of study. If undertaken all at once, such a study would be prohibitively expensive and involve a large sample followed over time. Still, the issue is to capture as much of the salient environment as possible in trying to understand and explain the contributions of particular stressors to children’s adjustment.
As difficult as it may be to measure the presence of the broadest cultural risk factors, such as the acceptance of an atmosphere of violence, this is the kind of research challenge that needs attention if we are to continue exploring why some children are more seriously affected by violence than others. Further, studies that take the qualities of the immediate neighborhood and broader social context into account can shift focus from the individual to extrafamilial contributing factors. This information can be used to situate the family in a particular ecological niche with certain contextualized features of risk and protection.
Bibliography:
- Auerswald, E. H. (1968). Interdisciplinary versus ecological approach. Family Process, 7(2), 202–215.
- Barker, R. (1968). Ecological psychology: Concepts and methods for studying the environment of human behavior. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
- Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by design and nature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- Bronfenbrenner, U., & Evans, G. W. (2000). Developmental science in the 21st century: Emerging questions, theoretical models, research designs, and empirical findings. Social Development, 9(1), 115–125.
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