Juvenile Delinquency Within Secondary Schools Psychology Essay

Published Date: 23 Mar 2015

This article is relevant to my study as it examines three major delinquency theories, namely social control, strain and differential association or social learning theories in an attempt to elaborate on the community context of adolescent involvement in delinquency. This article attempts to undertake a comparative analysis of contextual effects, which has not been previously studied. The study found that youths residing in areas of high male joblessness that experience stressful life events or little parental supervision are likely to be involved in delinquent behavior. Also the impact of school involvement on delinquency is more pronounced in urban environments low in male joblessness. According to the author, these results suggest that examining the contextual implications of delinquency theories is important, but theories need to be developed with more attention to specific contextual processes. It should be noted that the outcome measure used in the study focuses on minor forms of delinquency. Thus, an important limitation is that the study does not include measures of more serious forms of delinquency (example, robbery, sexual assault, or other forms of violent behavior), yet it is these behaviors that may be affected most by community characteristics. The study was conducted in communities within the United States of America hence; it may not sufficiently apply to Trinidad and Tobago. However, it does shed some light on the contextual effects within communities that may be linked to adolescent involvement in delinquency within the school environment.

Liljeberg, Jenny F, Jenny M Eklund, and Britt af Klinteberg. "Poor school bonding and delinquency over time: Bidirectional effects." Adolescence, 2011: 34: 1-9. This article is relevant to my study because it attempts to provide new insights of possible bidirectional effects and sex differences between adolescents' experienced school bonding and self-rated delinquency through the use of a longitudinal design. This article attempts to address the association between poor school bonding and delinquency that has been partly examined in earlier research. According to the authors, delinquency predicted poor school commitment for both boys and girls, and poor school attachment for girls, thus indicating bidirectional effects over time and sex differences in some of the bidirectional effects. It further found that delinquency of adolescent boys may be affected by all school bonding dimensions, whereas for girls it is their relationship with their teachers that is of significance. Some limitations to this study include that school bonding was based only on self-reports and there were only a few items per school bonding dimension. Also, those adolescents who dropped-out of the study reported more delinquent behavior and generally worse school bonding than adolescents who remained in the study over both data collections. Thus, the bias of missingness constitutes a weakness of the study since it is not known if the results obtained apply to the sample as a whole. However, the sample can be considered a representative group of adolescents and the study was longitudinal as opposed to being cross-sectional as previous studies. Further the sample was large enough to allow the analysis of boys and girls separately and thus to test for sex differences.

Hirschfield, Paul J, and Joseph Gasper. "The Relationship between School Engagement and Delinquency in Late Childhood and Early Adolescence." Youth Adolescence, 2011: 40: 3-22. This article is relevant to my study because it examines the relationship between school engagement and delinquency in late childhood and early adolescence. The authors examined such because little research has focused on the relationship between student engagement and delinquency. Results concluded that emotional and behavioral engagement predicts decreases in school and general delinquency. Also, cognitive engagement is associated with increases in these outcomes. Thirdly, the authors found that school and general delinquency predict decreased engagement only in the cognitive domain. Some limitations inherent in this study includes that the true effects of engagement and delinquency on each other may be underestimated. Another limitation is that the study may still be vulnerable to selection bias despite its relatively expansive set of control variables, according to the authors.

Hoeve, Machteld, Arjan Blokland, Judith S Dubas, Rolf Loeber, Jan R. M Gerris, and Peter H van der Laan. "Trajectories of Delinquency and Parenting Styles." Abnormal Child Psychology, 2008: 36: 223-235. This article is relevant to my study because it explores trajectories of adolescent delinquent development and examines the extent to which these trajectories are differentially predicted by childhood parenting styles. The authors used a mulitdimensional approach in order to acquire better understanding of patterns of parenting characteristics on the development of delinquency rather than the conventional single parenting characteristics that are commonly used. The study found that more serious delinquents tended to more frequently engage in delinquency and to report a higher proportion of theft. Also, serious persistent delinquents were the most violent of all trajectory groups. Moreover the study found that neglectful parenting was more frequent in moderate desisters, serious persisters, and serious desisters, suggesting that parenting styles differentiate non- or minor delinquents from more serious delinquents. One limitation of the study includes the authors not being able to distinguish true life-course persistent offenders into adulthood because the youngest sample has been followed up only until late adulthood. Another is that the sample only consists of boys whereby both delinquency trajectories and their associations to parenting styles may be different for girls. Some strengths of this study includes the use of multiple informants, analyzing relations between parenting and delinquency trajectories, examining a varied set of parenting characteristics to identify parenting styles and assessing a broad range of delinquent acts combining self-reported and official delinquency data. This study paves the way for future research which can focus on girls' delinquency trajectories thereby examining the relationship these may have to parenting.

Hoeve, Machteld, Judith S Dubas, Veroni I Eichelsheim, Peter H van der Laan, Wilma Smeenk, and Jan R. M Gerris. "The Relationship Between Parenting and Delinquency: A Meta-analysis." Abnormal Child Psychology, 2009: 37: 749-775. This article is relevant to my study because it examines the relationship between parenting and delinquency. During this period, very few studies focused on parenting styles and thus this study was conducted to determine whether the association between parenting and delinquency exists and what the magnitude of this linkage is. The study concluded that the strongest links were found for parental monitoring, psychological control, and negative aspects of support such as rejection and hostility, accounting for up to eleven percent of the variance in delinquency. Also, several effect sizes were moderated by parent and child gender, child age, informant on parenting, and delinquency type, indicating that some parenting behaviors are more important for particular contexts or subsamples. An important limitation to this study lies in its Meta-analysis whereby meta-analysis is related to the poor availability of studies with specific characteristics. According to the authors, future studies should extend research on parenting styles and delinquency in order to clarify whether these combinations of parenting characteristics have stronger associations with delinquency than only single dimensions. For example, studies should include neglectful and permissive styles, and not only focus on authoritarian and authoritative parenting styles. Furthermore the authors posited, in order to get insight into potential differences in the parenting-delinquency link between ethnic groups, it would be helpful if future studies would report effect sizes for each ethnic group. Moreover as the authors explained, further research is needed to provide information on parental correlates of delinquency across developmental levels.

Hoeve, Machteld, Judith S Dubas, Jan R.M Gerris, and Peter H van der Laan. "Maternal and paternal parenting styles: Unique and combined links to." Adolescence, 2011: 34: 813-827. This article is relevant to my study because it examines parenting styles between mothers and fathers and how this may relate to juvenile delinquency. The authors concluded that a significant parenting style by sex interaction was found. Also, neglectful parenting was related to higher levels of delinquency in males and permissive parenting was linked to delinquency in females. In addition, a long term relationship was found between fathers' neglectful parenting style and delinquency in males. Furthermore, results revealed that levels of delinquency were the lowest in families with at least one authoritative parent and highest in families with two neglectful parents, indicating that the level of delinquency was dependent on the combination of mother's and father's parenting styles. It must be noted, that the link between parenting and delinquency may also be due to the impact of delinquency on parenting and thus should not be ruled out. On the other hand, this study is one of the few studies that examined the combination of parenting styles and moves beyond studying the influence of one parent. Also, the authors found evidence to suggest that fathers next to mothers are important in the development of delinquent behavior. The authors further posited that fathers may even have more influence on their sons' delinquency than mothers, supporting the contention that it is important to work with fathers when treating male delinquents, even when they are late adolescents.

Flouri, Eirini. "Non-resident fathers' relationships with their secondary school age children: Determinants and children's mental health outcomes." Adolescence, 2006: 29: 525-538. This article is relevant to my study because it offers insight on the relationship non-resident fathers' have with their children and how this impacts on their mental health. Results show that frequency of contact was negatively related to time elapsed since parents separated and was higher if fathers were single than partnered. Also, compared to White, non-White adolescents reported lower frequency of father's contact but not lower father's involvement. In addition, father's involvement was related positively to mother's involvement and negatively to interparental conflict. As a whole, the authors found that non-resident father's involvement and frequency of contact did not improve the regression models predicting children's total difficulties or pro-social behavior. Furthermore, non-resident father's involvement did not predict child's difficulties or pro-social behavior, although frequency of contact was negatively associated with child's emotional symptoms. Moreover, neither child's ethnicity or gender nor mother's partner status moderated the link between child's mental health outcomes and non-resident father's involvement or frequency of contact. Some limitations according to the authors include that the data was obtained from a cross-sectional design and so causality claims cannot be made. Secondly, the authors investigated non-resident fathers' involvement with their adolescent children and so the findings may not be applicable to different children's ages or other family structures. Thirdly, social desirability and self-presentation bias cannot be ruled out.

Haynie, Dana L, and D. W Osgood. "Reconsidering Peers and Delinquency:How do Peers Matter?" Social Forces, 2005: 84 (2): 1109-1130. This article is relevant to my study because it examines the contribution peer influence has on delinquency from two sociological perspectives. According to the authors, earlier studies have overestimated normative influence by relying on respondents' reports about their friends' behaviors rather than obtaining independent assessments and by inadequately controlling for the tendency to select peers who are similar to oneself. It is from this stance this study was conducted and subsequently found support for both the socialization and opportunity models. The study revealed that the normative influence of peers on delinquency is more limited than indicated by most previous studies. Secondly, normative influence is not increased by being more closely attached to friends or spending more time with them. Thirdly, the contribution of opportunity is independent from normative influence and of comparable importance, and influences from the peer domain do not mediate the influences of age, gender, family or school. An important strength of this study is that it reflects delinquency as arising from many sources and by different processes. According to the authors, adolescents engage in more delinquency if they have delinquent friends or if they spend a great deal of time in unstructured socializing with friends. The author went further to say that the standard demographic variables of sex, age and race/ethnicity remain strongly related to delinquency, meaning that those theories do not appear to account for these fundamental relationships.

Trucco, Elisa M, Craig R Colder, and William F Wieczorek. "Vulnerability to peer influence: A moderated mediation study of early adolescent alcohol use initiation." Addictive Behaviors, 2011: 36: 729-736. This article is relevant to my study because it examines perceived peer attitudes and use as a mediator between peer delinquency and initiation of alcohol use, and how parenting may moderate vulnerability to this risk pathway. The author therefore attempts to clear the uncertainty that exists in the affiliation with deviant peers that is a correlate of adolescent alcohol use, particularly with respect to initiation of alcohol use in early adolescence. The author suggested that high levels of peer delinquency predicted perceived peer approval and use of alcohol and that peer approval and use of alcohol predicted initiation of alcohol use. Thus, reinforcement and modeling of alcohol use appear to be important mechanisms by which delinquent peers influence the initiation of drinking. Also, there was no support for parental warmth or control as moderators of peer influence. One limitation to this study is that is cannot be generalized across different racial and ethnic groups because the sample selected was largely Caucasian, hence parenting practices may operate differently across different racial and ethnic groups. Also, the mediational pathway in this study may not generalize to populations characterized by a high prevalence of single parent households, high concentrations of economic disadvantage, residential instability, and racial/ethnic heterogeneity, which are all risk factors associated with adolescent delinquency. Moreover, the measure of parental control and warmth used in the study had low reliability in the sample which may have resulted in low power to detect moderation.

Regnerus, Mark D. "Friends influence on adolescent theft and minor delinquency: A developmental test of peer-reported effects." Social Sciences Research, 2002: 31: 681-705. This article is relevant to my study because it examines the influence friends have on adolescent theft and minor delinquency. According to the author, most theories about adolescent involvement in delinquent behaviors afford a major role to peers or friends and their behaviors. This study however specifically focuses on the age-graded role those actual friends' behavior plays in explaining respondents' theft and minor delinquency, paying special attention to the potentially mitigating effects of social control measures. The study suggests that the influence of friends' own reported theft and minor delinquency in explaining respondents' behavior is relatively modest despite employing several different measures of friends' behaviors. The author also found that family influences proved weaker than expected during middle adolescence. In addition, the author postulated that the influence of friends' behavior was only modestly influential and slightly more noticeable during later adolescence. On the other hand, the sheer amount of time spent with friends according to the author was influential throughout adolescence. The author explained that the results reinforce skepticism concerning the accuracy of self-reports about peer behavior, and suggest that perceptions of peers' behavior may be more influential than the behaviors themselves. One limitation outlined by the author is its inability to directly compare side by side the relative influence of peer-reported and self-reported peer delinquency. Another according to the author is its reliance on peer reported data which may give rise to bias and the sample used is weighted towards ''adolescence-limited'' offenders.

Yu, ManSoo, and Arlene R Stiffman. "Positive family relationships and religious affiliation as mediators between negative environment and illicit drug symptoms in American Indian adolescents." Addictive Behaviors, 2010: 35: 694-699. This article is relevant to my study because it tests how positive family relationships and religious affiliation mediate between negative familial and social environments, and adolescent illicit drug abuse/dependence symptoms. The study found that positive family relationships mediated the negative impact of addicted family members, violence victimization, and negative school environment on illicit drug abuse/dependence symptoms. The study also found that religious affiliation mediated the negative effect of deviant peers on positive family relationships. According to the authors, intervention and prevention efforts may benefit from promoting positive family relationships and religious affiliation to reduce the impact of complex familial and social problems on illicit drug symptoms. An important shortcoming of this study is that the theoretical model used was tested to identify direct and indirect correlations rather than to identify causation. Another is that generalization of the sample is not possible because it was collected from only two locations. Thirdly, the measure of religious affiliation may not capture all aspects of religious affiliation because it only assessed that presence of it. Despite its shortcomings the study did in fact identified complex interrelations between negative and positive environment and illicit drug problems, particularly, the value of healthy family relations among American Indians for reducing the impact of negative environment on illicit drug problems.

Haines, Kevin, and Stephen Case. "Promoting Prevention: Targeting Family-Based Risk and Protective Factors for Drug Use and Youth Offending in Swansea." Social Work, 2005: 35: 169-187. This article is relevant to my study because it reflects an initiative to prevent youth offending by examing risk factors such as the family. Results from the study indicate that multiple exposure to risk factors within the family domain significantly increases the likelihood that a young person will become involved in school exclusion, drug-taking and offending, whilst exposure to multiple protective factors decrease the likelihood of these problem behaviours. According to the author, the evaluation process indicates that Promoting Prevention's cross-cutting and consultative methodology is an empowering and engaging way of targeting family-based interventions. This study is conducted in Swansea and so generalizations of the study to different cultures may not be applicable. For example, generalization of the applicability of risk factors for criminality and offending in different areas should be noted, as many factors could be context-specific and dependent on macro-level issues such as the local economy. Subsequently, the risk-factor method fails to capture the broader context in which offending takes place. The multi-agency, multiple intervention Promoting Prevention programmes, which is progressively spanning all areas in the lives of adolescents, is a promising way of addressing youth criminality prevention in Swansea. This program can therefore be used to apply certain aspects of it to Trinidad and Tobago in an attempt to deal with the social ills of the crime situation.

Pagani, L, R E Tremblay, F Vitaro, M Kerr, and P McDuff. "The Impact of Family Transition on the Development of Delinquency in Adolescent Boys: A 9-year Longitudinal Study." Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 1998: 39 (4): 489-499. This article is relevant to my study because it examines the impact family transition has on deviant development in adolescent boys. The study suggests that boys who experienced remarriage between age twelve and fifteen are at greater risk for delinquency. In particular the study showed evidence of the boys engaging in more theft and fighting at earlier ages than their peers from families that had remained intact. At similar points in development, there were less expressive parent-child relationships. Finally, these boys also perceived less monitoring by their parents, both overall and at different points in adolescence. One limitation of this study includes that it employed one data source. Secondly, because the authors did not detect any main effects of family transition on delinquency, the study could not test mediator effects of family processes such as parental supervision or parent-child communication. Thirdly, the data sets were perhaps too small to adequately have an ideal sample size for each group. However, this study allows for future research to be conducted using larger longitudinal data sets in order to examine changes in custody situations from early to later adolescence and their impact on the development of delinquency, as expressed by the authors.

Smith, Carolyn, and Marvin D Krohn. "Delinquency and Family Life Among Male Adolescents: The Role of Ethnicity." Youth and Adolescence, 1995: 24: 69-93. This article is relevant to my study because it addresses the role ethnicity and racial diversity plays in the relationship between family processes and delinquency among African American and white male adolescents. Results from this study indicate that the relative influence of particular family processes on delinquent conduct appears to differ among diverse populations. In addition, results show that living in a single parent home has less impact on family processes than living in a situation of economic hardship. The authors concluded that race and ethnicity are indeed important in the study of family socialization and delinquency. Also, that the centrality of the family for adolescent behavior does not appear to vary by ethnicity, although the different emphases in family socialization across different groups, do not appear related to differences in delinquency. Moreover, the authors expressed that economic hardship does impact family life and this seems more an important issue for research than ethnic differences in family processes.

Gonzales, Nancy A, Ana Mari Cauce, Ruth J Friedman, and Craig A Mason. "Family, Peer and Neighborhood Influences on Academic Achievement Among African-American Adolescents: One-Year Prospective Effects." Community Psychology, 1996: 24: no.3 365-387. This article is relevant to my study because it explores the effect the family, peer and neighborhood influences has on academic achievement among African-American adolescents. The study found that family status variables were not predictive of adolescent school performance. In addition, maternal support was related to adolescent grades and neighborhood risk was related to lower grades, while peer support predicted better grades. Further, neighborhood risk also moderated the effects of maternal restrictive control and peer support on adolescent grades. According to the authors, this study adds to the literature on the neighborhood context and to the understanding of factors that affect the school performance of African-American adolescents. Also in cases where the results provide evidence that addresses previous inconsistencies in the literature on African-American achievement, the findings are espeacially worthy. However, some limitations of the study includes that the data collected may be biased because it was based solely on adolescent reports. In addition in terms of the sampling strategy, the study was limited because the sample included fewer males than females.

Baumler, Elizabeth, Guy Parcel, Michael Ross, and Andrew Springer. "Supportive social relationships and adolescent health risk behavior among secondary school students in El Salvador." Social Science and Medicine, 2006: 62: 1628-1640. This article is relevant to my study because it examines the association between perceived parental social support and perceived social cohesion at school with selected youth risk behavior outcomes (physical fighting, victimization, suicidal ideation, substance use, and sexual intercourse). The study found that female students who perceived low parental social support were significantly more likely to report engaging in all risk behaviors examined and female students with perceptions of low school social cohesion were more likely to report suicidal ideation, binge drinking and drug use. The study also found that perceptions of parental social support and school social cohesion held fewer but still significant associations across risk behaviors for male students. Furthermore the authors postulated that male students who reported low parental social support were significantly more likely to report suicidal ideation, drug use and physical fighting, while male students with low perceived school social cohesion were more likely to report physical fighting but less likely to report binge drinking. According to the authors, the study was limited to two general social relationship measures regarding individual-level relationships with parents and school-level relationships, thus it does not capture the richness of the various direct and indirect social ties that may influence health behavior. The authors also outlined that the study involved the low variance of perceived school social cohesion among and between the schools studied, which prevented exploring the likelihood of engaging in a specific risk behavior based on attending a school with higher or lower school social cohesion scores.

Miller, Patrick. "Family structure, personality, drinking, smoking and illicit drug use: a study of UK teenagers." Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 1997: 45: 121-129. This article is relevant to my study because it examines the relationships between family structure and using alcohol, tobacco and illicit drugs. The study found that respondents living with both parents were significantly less likely to participate in all of these, with girls more affected, particularly as regards cigarette smoking and illicit drugs. Also it found that in other families, it made little difference whether the mother, the father or both were absent. According to the author, the effects were reduced when controlling four other variables namely, psychological symptoms, social support, involvement in hobbies and reading and engagement in behaviours such as riding mopeds, going out with friends, aggression and delinquency. The author suggested that these variables may mediate the effects of family structure. The author further postulated that single parents may be able to mitigate the effects of an absent spouse by building their children's self-esteem and by encouraging them to become involved in constructive hobbies and reading.

Gasper, Joseph, Stefanie DeLuca, and Angela Estacion. "Coming and going: Explaining the effects of residential and school mobility on adolescent delinquency." Social Science Research, 2010: 39: 459-476. This article is relevant to my study because it attempts to explain the effects of residential and school mobility on adolescent delinquency between the ages of twelve and seventeen. Prior studies have not adaquately addressed the issues associated with the relationship between mobility and delinquency that may be due to selection on pre-existing differences between mobile and non-mobile youth in their propensity for delinquency, therefore this study has examined such relationship. Results from this study show that mobility and delinquency are indeed spuriously related. That is, the study found large and significant differences in delinquency and substance use between mobile and non-mobile adolescents, whereby mobile adolescents were more likely than non-mobile adolescents to exhibit problem behaviors. According to the authors, the relationship between mobility and delinquency may well be reciprocal, since delinquency and other problem behaviors, poor school performance, and low educational attachment may influence mobility, which in turn may affect delinquency. One weakness associated with this study therefore, is that the model used cannot account for such. One strength of this study is that it did in fact utilize better data and methods than prior research studies however, there is still a lot of room for improvement.

Fomby, Paula, and Christie A Sennott. "Family structure instability and mobility: The consequences for adolescents' problem behavior." Social Science Research, 2012: 1-16. This article is relevant to my study because it examines whether family structure instability and mobility has consequences on adolescent behavior. The study found that residential and school mobility only minimally attenuate the association of family structure changes with behavior problems for younger girls and older adolescents. Also, exposure to peer pressure has a larger attenuating effect. The study concluded that although mobility often co-occurs with family structure change, it has independent effects on problem behavior. According to the authors, the strengths of this study lie within the completeness of the data available for family structure transition history and school mobility and the reliable and valid measures of problem behavior. Limitations of this study includes the study lack data on adolescents' exposure to peer pressure prior to family structure transitions and thus are unable to measure change in exposure to peer pressure following family instability. As the authors explained, the measure of peer pressure used may reflect self-selection into peer groups engaged in risky behavior by adolescents with pre-existing behavior problems. Despite such limitations, the authors explained that evidence is provided for the hypothesis that residential and school mobility that co-occur with family structure change affect adolescents' behavioral development because of their influence on peer network selection. Moreover, the findings also suggest that adolescents are at risk for exhibiting problem behavior even when they stay in the same school and neighborhood following a change in family structure.

Day, Susan E, and Gordon Bazemore. "Two Generations at Risk: Child Welfare, Institutional Boundaries, and Family Violence in Grandparent Homes." Child Welfare 90 (4): 99-116. This article is relevant to my study because it explores the risk of adolescent perpetrated violence in custodial grandparent households. This study sheds light on the flip side of adolescent delinquency, whereby, delinquency is being perpetrated on family members at home as opposed to in the school setting. Also, it raises the important question of whether such violence also takes place in the school setting. This research can be applied to the Trinidad and Tobago context in cases where students reside in extended family households or solely with their grandparents. Findings suggest that living arrangements with custodial grandparents have a significant and differential impact on rates of violent offending for chronic and serious offenders by race and gender. The authors suggested that a restorative approach would of course prioritize the safety of grandparents as victims, and then also emphasize the accountability of the offender, not to simply "take the punishment," but instead to take responsibility for his or her actions. According to the authors, participants would work to develop a plan to ensure safety for abused grandparents. While this would not abandon the need for incapacitation for some young abusers, or the need for appropriate treatment, such a plan could provide for a more far reaching reintegrative solution for custodial grandparents and grandchildren alike.

Nurco, David N, Timothy W Kinlock, Kevin E O'Grady, and Thomas E Hanlon. "Differential contributions of family and peer factors to the etiology of narcotic addiction." Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 1998: 51: 229-237. This article is relevant to my study because it investigates the relationships among early family circumstances, peer associations, and narcotic addiction in urban males. Results from this study indicated that the extent of deviant behavior among close friends at ages twelve to fourteen (12-14) and disruption in family structure (parental divorce, separation) prior to age eleven were significantly associated with narcotic addiction. The study further indicated that deviant behavior among family members, as well as family disruption, experienced prior to age eleven, also increased the probability of association with deviant peers and a negative home atmosphere at ages twelve to fourteen (12-14). A strength of this study is that the relationship between family factors and deviance are unique in two important ways. Firstly, according to the authors, they provide evidence of the very early age during which adverse family circumstances disproportionately occur among individuals who subsequently became narcotic addicts. Secondly, because of the present study's emphasis on distinct developmental sequences, according to the authors, the results obtained clearly indicate that family adversity preceded the onset of narcotic drug abuse.

Pagani, Linda, Bernard Boulerice, Frank Vitaro, and Richard E Tremblay. "Effects of Poverty on Academic Failure and Delinquency in Boys:." Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 1999: 40: No. 8. 1209-1219. This article is relevant to my study because it examines the effects of poverty on academic failure and delinquency in boys (age sixteen). This study unlike others, assessed the impact of poverty on adjustment in adolescent boys living in low-income neighborhoods. The study found that when maternal education and early childhood behaviour were controlled, poverty had an effect on both academic failure and extreme delinquency. It further found that academic failure and parental supervision did not mediate the relationship between poverty and delinquency eventhough they both significantly predicted extreme delinquency on their own. Furthermore, divorce increased the risk of theft and fighting at age sixteen, regardless of financial hardship and parental supervision only helped explain the effects of divorce on boys' fighting. According to the authors one limintation is that it would have been beneficial to explore the effects of poverty on different types of antisocial behaviour in females, thus future research would benefit from such. Also, since the entire sample of boys were not used, it runs the risk that the amount of boys utilized, may not be representative of the entire sample and thus the population. However, the strengths include that the authors separated the effects of the variables, namely poverty and family configuration. Also, the authors controlled for maternal education therefore adding to the reliability of the findings. Further, the overall advantage was that a comparison of the effects of varying intensity of deprivation in boys living in the same underprivileged environment was possible.

Baron, Stephen W. "Street Youth,Unemployment, and Crime: Is It That Simple? Using General Strain Theory to Untangle the Relationship." Criminology and Criminal Justice, 2008: 399-434. This article is relevant to my study because it explores the relationship street youth, unemployment and crime share and utilzes strain theory to explain such relationship. Researchers have called for greater attention to be paid to the variables linking unemployment to crime and thus this study was conducted from this angle. Findings reveal that the effect of unemployment on crime is mediated and moderated primarily by other variables. In particular according to the author, unemployment is conditioned by external casual attributions that lead to anger over unemployment, which in turn leads to crime. In addition, the author postulated that the direct effect of unemployment on crime is moderated by monetary dissatisfaction and minimal employment searches. Furthermore, anger over unemployment is also the result of negative subjective interpretations of economic situations and a continued attachment to the labour market. Moreover, these negative subjective perceptions, the lack of state support, a decrease in social control, and prolonged homelessness lead to greater participation in criminal activities directly. Finally, according to the author, criminal involvement is also encouraged by peers, deviant values, and a lack of fear of punishment. A limitation of this study is that the data used a crosssectional design. Further, the author explained that the results of this work cannot be generalized beyond the street youth population. According to the author, the findings from these samples can however, be utilized to make decisions about future research to verify findings in broader populations.

Apel, Robert, Robert Brame, Shawn Bushway, and Raymond Paternoster. "The Effect of Teenage Employment on Delinquency and Problem Behaviors." Social Forces, 2003: 82 (1): 297-335. . This article is relevant to my study because it examines the effect teenage employment has on delinquency and problem behaviors. As the authors postulated, previous studies have not adequately addressed the issue of possible selection effects, therefore this study attempts to re-examine the relationship between intensive employment and delinquency and problem behaviors. The results of this study found evidence of substancial differences between youths who worked long hours and those who worked fewer or no hours and a positive and significant relationship was found between work intensity for adolescents and the probability of delinquency, substance use and problem behaviors. It must noted however, when the authors controlled for unobserved heterogenity, the positive co-efficient for intensive work disappeared. A limitation of this study is that the sample was limited to Caucasians, thus the extent to whether such findings can be generalized to males and females of other racial minorities or majorities is not known. According to the authors, it is not known whether the different hours worked, jobs performed or employment experiences may have resulted in different effects on anti-social behavior. A strength of this study is its finding that the relationship between intensive adolescent working and delinquency or problem behaviors is largely spurious due to pre-employment differences contributes to a new assessment of youth employment. This study therefore seek to promote continued research in re-examining the impact of adolescent employment and the consequences of adolescent work.

Brody, Gene H, Yi-Fu Vhen, and Steven M Kogan. "A cascade model connecting life stress to risk behavior among rural African American emerging adults." Development and Psychopathology, 2010: 22: 667-678. This article is relevant to my study because it demonstrates that life stress was linked to increases in risk behavior. The study indicated that life stress fostered increases in negative emotions. According to the authors, negative emotions, in turn, were linked to increases in affiliations with deviant peers and romantic partners; this forecast increases in risk behavior. The findings supported a stress proliferation framework, in which primary stressors affect increases in secondary stressors that carry forward to influence changes in risk behaviors that can potentially compromise mental health. Some limitations according to the authors include that the exclusion of youths who dropped out of school from the sampling list potentially limits the study's generalizability. Also, it is not known whether the present results generalize to White, Hispanic, or Asian families living in the same communities as the study participants or to urban families of any race. In addition, the authors explained although the sample is representative of African American, it is nevertheless possible that the families who took part in this study, because of self-selection processes, may have been functioning differently than the population at large.

Kreager, Derek A, and Jeremy Staff. "Too Cool for School? Violence, Peer Status and High School Dropout." Social Forces, 2008: 87: 1. This article is relevant to my study because it examines the phenomena of violence, peer status and high school dropouts. In this study, peer network data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health was used to examine whether peer status within highly violent groups increases male risks of high school dropout. Delinquent subcultures have long been theorized throughout the century however, little quantitative research has addressed the core hypotheses within these studies. It is from this viewpoint that the authors carried out this study. The authors found that disadvantaged boys with high status in violent groups are at much greater risks of high school dropout than other students. Analyses of data was restricted to males samples neglecting females samples thus a limitation of this study is that gender differences in terms of peer status and attainment was not addressed. This would pave way for future research to be conducted in this area. Two data limitations were identified by the authors. Firstly, analyses cannot fully identify the causal ordering of the observed relationships. Hence, future research examining within-individual changes in school performance, violence, and peer status, beginning in early childhood and extending into late adolescence, may help researchers better understand the causal ordering of school failure and violence. Secondly, spuriousness resulting from unobserved population heterogeneity cannot be ruled out according to the authors.

Chen, Ji-Kang, and Ron Avi Astor. "Students' personal traits, violence exposure, family factors, school dynamics and the perpetration of violence in Taiwanese elementary schools." Health Education Research, 2011: 26: no. 1 150-166. This article is relevant to my study because it looks at how school variables mediate bewteen personal and family factors and school violence. The study examines a theoretical model proposing that negative personal traits, exposure to violence and parental monitoring knowledge have both direct influences as well as indirect influences mediated through school engagement, at-risk peers and poor student-teacher relationships on school violence committed by students against students and teachers. The study indicated that to reduce school violence more effectively in the context of elementary schools, intervention may exclusively focus on improving students' within-school experiences and the quality of the students' relationships with teachers and school peers. The overall findings support the theoretical model proposed in this study and therefore can be used as a theoretical base for studying students' personal traits, violence exposure, family factors, school dynamics and the perpetration of violence within secondary schools in the context of Trinidad and Tobago. Also, the theoretical model is applicable to both male and female students. Limitations inherent in this study include that the study is cross sectional and that the results of this study do not establish casual effect relationships. Secondly, according to the authors, the data is only based on student self-reporting, and school violence was measured in terms of behavior occurring during the prior twelve months. This may lead students to under- or over-report violent behavior.

Dolan, Mairead C, and Charlotte E Rennie. "The relationship between psychopathic traits measured by the Youth Psychopathic trait Inventory and psychopathology in a UK sample of conduct disordered boys." Adolescence, 2007: 30: 601-611. This article is relevant to my study because it examines the relationship between psychopathic traits measured by the Youth Psychopathic trait Inventory (YPI) and psychopathology. The authors revealed that the Youth Psychopathic trait Inventory had showed a positive correlation with aggression, delinquency and impulsivity. The Youth Psychopathic trait as expressed by the authors, was able to identify a ''psychopathic-like'' subgroup with higher impulsive/aggressive and delinquent scores and lower empathy. According to the authors, the Youth Psychopathic trait may be of value as a screening tool for cases that require further assessment and evaluation using interview based measures of psychopathic traits. A limitation of this study according to the authors, is that it relies on self-reported measures of personality and may be subjected to bias, particularly where assessment has therapeutic or criminal justice implications for the individual. On the other hand, a strength of this study is that it is the first study in the United Kingdom to look at the validity of the Youth Psychopathic trait Inventory as a measure of psychopathic traits in a United Kingdom population of adolescent males.

Rucevic, Silviji. "Psychopathic Personality Traits and Delinquent and Risky Sexual Behaviors in Croatian Sample of Non-referred Boys and Girls." Law Hum Behavior, 2010: 34: 379-391. This article is relevant to my study because it investigates the association of psychopathic traits with violent and non-violent delinquency, delinquency versatility, and risky sexual behavior. Results showed that the Impulsive-Irresponsible behavioral style had stronger association with non-violent delinquency and delinquency versatility for boys. However, the Impulsive-Irresponsible dimension had stronger influence on risky sexual behavior for girls compared with boys. The results of a two-group confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the three-factor model of the Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory (YPI) was invariant across gender. Some limitations according to the author is that the cross-sectional design used in the study makes it impossible to make any type of interpretation of the temporal ordering necessary to help reveal causal relationships between psychopathic traits, delinquent behavior, and risky sexual behavior. On the contrary, the study does add to a growing body of research suggesting that these traits are associated with delinquent and risky sexual behaviors in many different samples of youth as reflected by the author. Secondly, the assessment of psychopathy and delinquent and risky sexual behaviors were based solely on self-reports. According to the author, the reliance on self-reporting measures may have inflated the current correlations because of the shared method variance. Despite such limitations, the author explained that the (YPI) has shown theoretically important correlates with outcome measures that are consistent with the construct of psychopathy, such as postdicting the severity of delinquent and risky behaviors.

Das, Jacqueline, Sanne Hillege, and Corine de Ruiter. "The Youth Psychopathic traits Inventory: Psychometric properties and its relation to substance use and interpersonal style in a Dutch sample of non-referred adolescents." Adolescence, 2010: 33: 83-91. This article is relevant to my study because the study presents evidence on the reliability and construct validity of the Dutch version of the Youth Psychopathic traits Inventory (YPI), a self-report instrument for psychopathic traits in adolescent boys and girls. The authors postulated that the Youth Psychopathic traits Inventory was found to have good internal consistency. Furthermore, exploratory Principal Components Analysis (PCA) indicated a three-factor structure for the Youth Psychopathic traits Inventory, including a Grandiose-manipulative, Callous-unemotional, and Impulsive-irresponsible dimension. According to the authors, good internal consistency was demonstrated for all dimensions in boys as well as girls, except for the Callous-unemotional dimension. Results further indicated strong correlations between psychopathic traits and dominant and hostile interpersonal style. According to the authors, the Grandiose-manipulative dimension predicted dominant interpersonal behavior in boys, but not in girls and in girls, a dominant interpersonal style was predicted by the Impulsive-irresponsible dimension. Psychopathic traits, mainly the Impulsive-irresponsible dimension, were related to a higher frequency of self-reported drug and alcohol use in boys and girls. A Limitation of this study includes its sole reliance on self-report instruments. The authors explained, since all ratings in this study were obtained by self-report, relationships that found may reflect method factors. Also, caution is required when inferring causality between psychopathic traits and substance use in adolescence from self-report instruments. Furthermore as the authors expressed, the representativeness of the sample is limited to adolescents from small towns in the north and south of The Netherlands.

Chadwick, Oliver, Alan Taylor, and Eric Taylor. "Hyperactivity and Reading Disability: A Longitudinal Study of the Nature of the Association." Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 1999: 40 (7): 1039-1050. This article is relevant to my study because it investigates the possible causal relationships between hyperactivity and educational underachievement. The study provided little support for the idea that persistent reading disabilities either lead to the development of hyperactivity de novo or increased the likelihood that hyperactivity, when present, would persist. According to the authors, although features of hyperactivity persisted to follow-up, there was little evidence that either lead to the development of reading disabilities or increased the likelihood that reading disabilities, when present, would persist. Furthermore the authors postulated that socioeconomic adversity and a history of speech therapy were more common in the group with both hyperactivity and reading disability, but the strength of these associations made it unlikely that these factors could account for the frequent co-occurrence of the two conditions. One limitation of this study as the authors explained is that the sample size may have limited the power of the study to detect significance between groups.

Fairchild, Graeme, and Stephanie H M Van Goozen. "How can the study of biological processes help design new interventions for children with severe antisocial behavior?" Development and Psychopathology, 2008: 20: 941-973. This article is relevant to my study because it examines whether biological processes can help devise new interventions for children with severe anti-social behaviors. Based on previous studies the author expresses it is well established that both biological and social factors are involved in the development of antisocial behavior. The aim of this study however is to discuss the evidence that specific neurobiological systems are involved in the etiology of childhood-onset antisocial behavior. The authors argue that familial factors (genetic influences, early childhood adversity) are linked to negative behavioral outcomes (antisocial behavior problems) through the mediating and transactional interplay with neurobiological deficits. According to the authors, an investigation of neurobiological functioning in antisocial children might not only indicate which children are most likely to persist in engaging in severe antisocial behavior but also guide the development of new interventions. Some limitations inherent in this study includes the ethical issues involved in the use of technologies examples include brain stimulation, psychopharmacology, neurofeedback, and neuroimaging. Secondly, the authors explained that the attempt to localize antisocial or psychopathic behavior and explain this in terms of the pathological functioning of a specific part of the brain has significant moral implications. A third ethical concern as outlined by the authors is related to the power of neurobiological and physiological research to predict future psychopathology.

Walker-Barnes, Chanequa, and Craig A Mason. "Delinquency and Substance Use among Gang-Involved Youth: The Moderating Role of Parenting Practices." Community Psychology, 2004: 34: 235-250. This article is relevant to my study because it examines the effect parenting practices has upon the relationship between gang involvement and adolescent behavior. The study indicated that gang involvement is a highly significant positive predictor of each of three categories of problem behavior (minor delinquency, major delinquency, and substance use). Also, three of the four parenting variables (behavioral control, psychological control, parent-adolescent conflict, and warmth) are found to moderate the relationship between gang involvement and problem behavior, with the most consistent effects found for behavioral control and warmth. According to the authors, these findings indicate that intervention efforts aimed at reducing the impact of gang involvement on adolescent development should consider factors that may decrease the behavioral outcomes associated with youth gangs. One of the strengths of this study is its focus on intra-individual variations and change over time. However, a limitation is that the sample is drawn from one school in Miami, which limits its generalizability to other settings. According to the authors, it is possible that the pattern observed here reflect additional ecological factors specific to this school and community. Further, this study relies upon self-report by adolescents, which may be subject to recall bias and impression management.

Best, David, Victoria Manning, Michael Gossop, Samantha Gross, and John Strang. "Excessive drinking and other problem behaviours among14-16 year old schoolchildren." Addictive Behaviors, 2006: 31: 1424-1435. This articles is relevant to my study because it investigates excessive drinking and associations with other problem behaviours in school students aged fourteen to sixteen years. The study found at least one episode of excessive drinking was reported by 32% of the sample, with 10% reporting five or more episodes. Also, excessive drinking was positively associated with frequency of cigarette smoking, use of cannabis, positive attitudes towards illicit drugs, low educational aspirations, higher depression scores, frequent truancy, and involvement in delinquent behaviours. Some limitations within this study include that it uses a cross-sectional design and according to the authors, the results do not indicate the nature or direction of the relationship between excessive drinking and other problematic behaviours. Another limitation is that the results cannot be regarded as measures of population prevalence because the schools were not selected to be representative of those in London or in the United Kingdom. Regardless, the findings are based upon a substantial sample of young people attending seven different publicly funded schools and there is no reason to believe that there were any systematic school sampling biases that compromised the validity of the reported data. According to the authors, little is known about the validity of self-reported substance use in school-based studies, though there was no evidence of substantial over-reporting of substance use as determined by the inclusion of a dummy drug in this survey.

Duncan, S C, T E Duncan, and L A Strycker. "Alcohol use from ages 9 to 16: A cohort-sequential latent growth model." Drug and Alchohol Dependence, 2006: 81: 71-81. This article is relevant to my study because it examines alcohol use from pre-adolescence to mid-adolescence and highlights some of the causes of such behavior. Relatively few studies have examined the development of adolescent alcohol use, especially among pre-adolescents and early adolescents, hence the reason why the authors carried out this particular study. The study showed that proportions of alcohol users increased steadily from ages 9 to 16 years. Also, female and higher levels of parent alcohol use were associated with higher initial rates of alcohol use, whereas greater friends' encouragement of alcohol use was related to lower initial rates of alcohol use. Alternatively, more peer deviance and friends' encouragement of alcohol use was related to an increase in alcohol use rates from ages nine to sixteen years, as was being White and from a single-parent family. According to the authors, despite fairly high participation rates, the study is still limited by its agreement rate bias (75%) and study design selection bias of only nine, eleven, and thirteen year old White and African-American youth. The study also was limited in terms of the number of covariates used, whereby it only included demographic, family, and peer factors. Some strengths of this study however includes the use of a randomly recruited sample, use of youth- and parent-report data, four years of longitudinal data and use of a cohort-sequential latent growth model to determine growth in alcohol use rates among youth ages nine to sixteen.

McCrystal, Patrick, Kathryn Higgins, and Andrew Percy. "Brief Report: School exclusion drug use and delinquency in adolescence." Adolescence, 2006: 29: 829-836. This article is relevant to my study because it explores the relationship between school exclusion and drug use and delinquency in adolescents. The study suggest that many of the students in the study may have already developed a high propensity to drug abuse and antisocial behavior compared with their peers in mainstream education. According to the authors, as the students were excluded from school, they were not assessing school based prevention programmes delivered to their comtemporaries at school suggesting that additional and spcialized resources are required to fully meet their needs. A limitation of this study includes that the cross-sectional design used in this study limits the opportunity to determine how the young people surveyed are making these choices, as reflected by the authors. According to the authors, there are a number of problems involved in the delivery of the prevention programmes. Such problems include identifying those most in need and ensuring they assess the appropriate fascilities. Also, without investing resources in this area the knowledge base on the drug using behaviors' of this 'high-risk' group will remain limited. Furthermore according to the authors, as the young people from the booster sample are not contributing to school based surveys, such sources may possess certain limitations with their value for the development of prevention initiatives to school aged young people.

Cox, W. Miles, Sophie Crossley, Steven G Hosier, Becky Kendall, and Katherine L Roberts. "Motives for drinking, alcohol consumption, and alcohol-related problems among British secondary-school and university students." Addictive Behaviors, 2006: 31: 2147-2157. This article is relevant to my study because it examines the relationships among reasons for drinking, alcohol consumption, and drinking-related problems among secondary-school students and university students. The study indicated that negative reasons were stronger predictors of drinking problems than were positive reasons among both secondary-school and university students. Results also showed that the effect of both positive and negative drinking reasons on alcohol-related problems was partially mediated by alcohol consumption among both secondary-school students and university students. The authors went further to explain that there were different correlates of problematic drinking among younger and older students, which suggest that different types of intervention should be used with the two age groups. According to the authors, a shortcoming of this study is that the present convenience samples do not represent the national British populations of which they are a part. Also, the findings may not be likely to generalize to other regions of the world. In addition, the authors reflected that the gender imbalance in the university students reflects a current trend in higher education thus; future studies should compare male and female university students to identify possible gender differences in drinking motives, alcohol consumption, and alcohol-related problems. The authors further suggested that a longitudinal study would help to fully clarify the transition in drinking from secondary school to the university, which can be utilized in future research.

Passini, Stefano. "The delinquency-drug relationship: The influence of social reputation and moral disengagement." Addictive Behaviors, 2012: 37: 577-579. This article is relevant to my study because it examines social reputation and moral disengagement as predictors of both drug use and violent delinquency in adolescents. Results found that social reputation and moral disengagement predict drug use and delinquency and that heavy drug use predicts delinquency. According to the author, the more adolescents attach importance to their "bad" reputation (as being tough or deviant), the more they use light and heavy drugs and the more they are engaged in vandalism and violent offenses. Instead, the more they give importance to a "good" reputation (as respectful of other people and norms), the less they are involved in such behaviors. Moreover, as hypothesized, drug use has an impact on violent delinquency and this is only true concerning heavy drugs. The author suggest that in order to keep adolescents away from drug abuse and violent behavior it may be relevant to work on their reputation and on the responsibility perceived for their a