Review 3 of "Defense, disrespect, and #deadly: A qualitative exploration of precursors to youth violence informed through hospital-based violence prevention program follow up"

Vote: Reject

[For votes to count, referees must reasonably explain why they voted as they did. Thus, please explain your vote. If you voted to publish pending minor changes, specify each change, why it is needed, and, possibly, how it should/could be done.]

Unfortunately, I have voted to reject Defense, disrespect, and #deadly: A qualitative exploration of precursors to youth violence informed through hospital-based violence prevention program follow up as I believe it needs more than minor revisions.

Firstly, there is some important literature that is and theory that is missing from this paper. Building in Anderson’s Code of the street would help to frame the findings and enhance the social-cultural analysis. Further, Stuart’s work in Code of the Tweet and Ballad of the Bullet would help to enhance findings and add to the literature review.

Second, more information is needed on the participants; how many were there exactly? What were their racial, gender and socio-economic demographics? These are important details that help to explain the context of young people's views.

Third, there is a lot of time spent talking about the hospital program D2D which is really interesting but doesn’t seem to relate to the findings. The findings of how violence is occurring is then not related back to D2D, will this be changing the programming as a result of the research? What active steps can programs take to include these causes of violence? The authors claim that “Youth violence prevention programs can be more effective through use of a social cognitive intervention framework to address violence through building knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed for violence reduction informed by precursors to violence found in this analysis” How exactly? Have they tested this?

Finally, the findings here are not original and actually mirror existing literature from Patton et al who the authors have included and those I have cited here. What is original is hearing from the young people in a hospital based program. Including young people's voices is important and admirable but perhaps having them discuss D2D, how it helped them or how they think practitioners and policy makers can intervene in violence may be more helpful and original.