The study found a significant relationship between exposure to community violence and psychological distress among older adolescents, regardless of variations in the characteristics measured. Girls were not found to be more vulnerable than boys to psychological distress due to exposure to community violence. African-Americans were not more vulnerable than Latinos, and individuals with less education were not more vulnerable than those with a better education. These findings and their interpretation, however, are advised to be tentative, since the study examined only a single sample of older adolescents; only exposure to community violence as an antecedent variable; only psychological distress as a consequent variable; and only gender, ethnicity, and educational status as moderating variables. Also, ethnicity was limited to two groups. Study participants were 1,142 older adolescents who lived in New York City, principally in the boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn. Data were collected with group-administered questionnaires at five educational sites from spring 1998 through spring 2001. Exposure to community violence was measured as being either a witness or a victim of specific types of community violence over respondents' 3 years in high school. Psychological distress was measured with the Trauma Symptom Inventory. Each member of the sample was classified into one of five educational levels according to the data collection site. Race/ethnicity was a classification based on the "ethnicity" and the "race" items used in the 2000 U.S. Census. 2 tables and 54 references