Victimization from Urban Violence: Levels and Related Factors in Selected Cities in Latin America and Spain - Research in Public Health - Technical Papers

This article compares the levels of victimization associated with various causes and identifies their related factors in eight cities in Latin America and Spain. For this purpose regional data from the Multicenter Study, Project ACTIVA, were used. This study, coordinated by the Pan American Health Organization, was conducted in 1996. The sample studied consisted of 10,821 people between the ages of 18 and 70 in the cities of Salvador de Bahi´a and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Cali, Colombia; Caracas, Venezuela; Madrid, Spain; San Jose´, Costa Rica, San Salvador, El Salvador, and Santiago, Chile. The results reveal that the levels of victimization from various types of violence are different in each city and that the variables most frequently associated with victimization in cities, although not in all of them, are gender, age, and alcohol consumption.