Beginning from the Very Beginning: The Role of Family Environment in Shaping Adolescents’ Nonviolent Behavior

Abstract

Based on the prevalence of violence in our current world, including Ethiopia, the importance
of nonviolent behavior (NVB), and the scarcity of empirical studies of factors that contribute
to NVB, this study sought to examine the role of Ethiopian adolescents’ family environments
(FEs) in their NVBs. The study employed a quantitative approach and was conducted on
Ethiopian adolescents attending secondary school (grades 11 &12) in Addis Ababa. 274
randomly selected adolescents (170 females, 104 males) participated in the study.
Questionnairescomposed of demographic questions and two scales, the Family Environment
Scale (FES) and the Diamond Scale of Nonviolence (DSN), were used to collect data. The
data was analyzed by descriptive statistics, correlation, and structural equation modeling
(SEM). It was found that the six components of FE accounted for a substantial amount of
variance (R2 = 31.80%) in NVB. The structural model that guided the study (which was
labeled the Peace Engineering Model) was found to fit the adolescents’ data adequately and
thus was applicable in explaining the relationships between NVB and components of FE.
Overall, it was concluded that the adolescents’ FEs play vital roles in shaping NVB. The
theoretical and practical implications of these findings were discussed.