Abstract
Previous work has documented the similar importance of developmental domains in accounting for adolescent deviance in different racial/ethnic groups (e.g., Vazsonyi A. T., and Flannery, D. J., 1997, J. Early Adolesc. 17(3): 271–293). The current investigation is a replication and extension of this line of work. It examined the importance of the family (closeness, monitoring, and conflict) and school (grades, homework time, educational aspirations, and commitment) domains on a sample of adolescent (mean age = 16.4 years) African American and Caucasian youth (N = 809). The following important findings were made: (a) developmental processes including family and school domain variables and deviance were very similar for African American and Caucasian youth; (b) both developmental domains revealed independent predictive relationships with a number of different measures of adolescent deviance in both groups; and (c) the 2 domains uniquely accounted for 25% and 37% of the variance explained respectively in African American and Caucasian adolescent total deviance.
Similar content being viewed by others
REFERENCES
Agnew, R., Cullen, F. T., Burton, V. S., Jr., Evans, T. D., and Dunaway, R. G. (1996). A new test of classic strain theory. Just. Quarter. 13: 681–704.
Agnew, R., and Jones, D. H. (1988). An examination of inflated educational expectations. Sociol. Q. 29: 315–337.
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and design. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Browne, M. W., and Cudeck, R. (1993). Alternative ways of assessing model fit. In Bollen, K. A., and Long, J. S. (eds.), Testing Structural Equation Models. Sage, Newbury Park, CA, pp. 136–162.
Cernkovich, S. A., and Giordano, P. C. (1987). Family relationships and delinquency. Criminology 25(2): 401–427.
Cernkovich, S. A., and Giordano, P. C. (1992). School bonding, race, and delinquency. Criminology 30(2): 261–291.
Dishion, T. J., Patterson, G. R., Stoolmiller, M., and Skinner, M. L. (1991). Family, school, and behavioral antecedents to early adolescent involvement with antisocial peers. Dev. Psychol. 27(1): 172–180.
Dornbusch, S. M., Erickson, K. G., Laird, J., and Wong, C. A. (2001). The relation of family and school attachment to adolescent deviance in diverse groups and communities. J. Adolesc. Res. 16(4): 396–422.
Durkheim, E. (1956). Education and Sociology. Free Press, Glencoe, IL.
Elliott, D. S., and Ageton, S. S. (1980). Reconciling race and class differences in self-reported and official estimates of delinquency. Am. Sociol. Rev. 45: 98–110.
Elliott, D., and Voss, H. (1974). Delinquency and Dropout. Heath, Lexington, MA.
Farrington, D. P. (1988). Self-reported and official offending from adolescence to adulthood. In Klein, M. W. (ed.), Cross-National Research in Self-Reported Crime and Delinquency. Kluwer, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, pp. 929–964.
Gorman-Smith, D., Tolan, P. H., and Henry, D. B. (2000). A developmental–ecological model of the relation between family functioning to patterns of delinquency. J. Quantit. Criminol. 16(2): 169–198.
Hamburg, M. A. (1998). Youth violence is a public health concern. In Elliott, D. S., Hamburg, B. A., and Williams, K. R. (eds.), Violence in American Schools Cambridge University Press, New York, pp. 31–54.
Hawkins, D. F., Laub, J. H., and Lauritsen, J. L. (1998). Race, ethnicity, and serious juvenile offending. In Loeber, R., and Farrington, D. P. (eds.), Serious and Violent Juvenile Offenders: Risk Factors and Successful Interventions. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 30–46.
Herrenkohl, T. I., Maguin, E., Hill, K. G., Hawkins, J. D., and Abbott, R. D. (2000). Developmental risk factors for youth violence. J. Adolesc. Health 26(3): 176–186.
Hindelang, H. J., Hirschi, T., and Weis, J. G. (1979). Correlates of delinquency: The illusion of discrepancy between self-report and official measures. Am. Sociol. Rev. 44: 995–1014.
Hindelang, M. J., Hirschi, T., and Weis, J. G. (1981). Measuring Delinquency. Sage, Beverly Hills, CA.
Hirschi, T. (1969). Causes of Delinquency. University of California Press, Berkeley.
Huizinga, D., Menard, S., and Elliott, D. (1989). Delinquency and drug use: Temporal and developmental patterns. Just. Q. 6: 419–455.
Junger-Tas, J., and Marshall, I. H. (1999). The self-report methodology in crime research. Crime Just. 25: 291–367.
Kao, G., and Tienda, M. (1998). Educational aspirations of minority youth. Amer. J. Educat. Res. 106: 349–384.
Krug, E., Mercy, J., Dahlberg, L., and Powell, K. (1998). Firearm-and non-firearm-related homicide among children: An international comparison. Homicide Stud. 2(1): 83–95.
Larson, R. W., Richards, M. H., Sims, B., and Dworkin, J. (2001). How urban African American young adolescents spend their time: Time budgets for locations, activities, and companionship. Amer. J. Comm. Psychol. 29(4): 565–597.
Lipsey, M. W., and Derzon, J. H. (1998). Predictors of violent and serious delinquency in adolescence and early adulthood: A synthesis of longitudinal research. In Loeber, R., and Farrington, D. P. (eds.), Serious and Violent Juvenile Offenders: Risk Factors and Successful Interventions. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 86–105.
Loeber, R., and Dishion, T. J. (1983). Early predictors of male delinquency: A review. Psychol. Bull. 94: 68–99.
Loeber, R., and Stouthamer-Loeber, M. (1986). Family factors as correlates and predictors of juvenile conduct problems and delinquency. In Tonry, M., and Morris, N. (eds.), Crime and Justice (Vol. 7). University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Loehlin, J. (1992). Latent Variable Models: An Introduction to Factor, Path and Structural Analysis. Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ.
Matsueda, R. L., and Heimer, K. V. (1987). Race, family structure, and delinquency: A test of differential association and social control theories. Am. Sociol. Rev. 52: 826–840.
McCord, J. (1979). Some child-rearing antecedents of criminal behavior in adult men. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 37: 1477–1486.
McGoldrick, M. (1993). Ethnicity, cultural diversity, and normality. In Walsh, F. (ed.), Normal Family Processes Guilford Press, NewYork, pp. 331–360.
Moffitt, T. E. (1988). Accommodating self-report methods to a low-delinquency culture: A longitudinal study from New Zealand. In Klein, M. W. (ed.), Cross-National Research in Self-Reported Crime and Delinquency Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, pp. 43–66.
Moffitt, T. E. (1993). Adolescence limited and life course persistent antisocial behavior: A developmental taxonomy. Psychol. Rev. 100: 674–701.
Patterson, G. R. (1982). Coercive Family Process. Castalia, Eugene, OR.
Patterson, G. R., and Dishion, T. J. (1985). Contributions of families and peers to delinquency. Criminology 23: 63–79.
Peeples, F., and Loeber, R. (1994). Do individual factors and neighborhood context explain ethnic differences in juvenile delinquency? J. Quantit. Criminol. 10: 141–158.
Rigdon, E. E. (1996). CFI versus RMSEA: A comparison of two fit indexes for structural equation modeling. Struct. Eq. Model. 3(4): 369–379.
Rowe, D. C., Vazsonyi, A. T., and Flannery, D. J. (1994). No more than skin deep: Ethnic and racial similarity in developmental process. Psychol. Rev. 101(3): 396–417.
Scholte, E. M. (1999). Factors predicting continued violence into young adulthood. J. Adolesc. 22: 3–20.
Sherman, L. W., Gottfredson, D., MacKenzie, D., Eck, J., Reuter, P., and Bushway, S. (1997). Preventing Crime: What Works, What Doesn't What's Promising? Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, DC.
Smith, C., and Krohn, M. D. (1995). Delinquency and family life among male adolescents: The role of ethnicity. J. Youth Adolesc. 24(1): 69–93.
Snyder, H. N., and Sickmund, M. (1999). Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 1999 National Report. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Washington, DC.
Steinberg, L., and Avenevoli, S. (1998). Disengagement from school and problem behavior in adolescence: A developmental–contextual analysis of the influences of family and part-time work. In Jessor, R. (ed.), New Perspectives on Adolescent Risk Behavior Cambridge University Press, New York, pp. 392–424.
Stevenson, H. W., Chen, C., and Uttal, D. D. (1990). Beliefs about achievement: Astudy of Black, White, and Hispanic children. Child Develop. 61(2): 508–523.
Stouthamer-Loeber, M., and Loeber, R. (1988). The use of prediction data in understanding delinquency. Behav. Sci. Law 6: 333–354.
Taylor, R. D., Casten, R., Flickinger, S. M., Roberts, D., and Fulmore, C. D. (1994). Explaining the school performance of African American adolescents. J. Res. Adolesc. 4(1): 21–44.
Thornberry, T. P., Lizotte, A. J., Krohn, M. D., Farnworth, M., and Jang, S. J. (1991). Testing interactional theory: An examination of reciprocal causal relationships among family, school, and delinquency. J. Crim. Law Criminol. 82: 3–35.
Vazsonyi, A. T., and Flannery, D. J. (1997). Early adolescent delinquent behaviors: Associations with family and school domains. J. Early Adolesc. 17(3): 271–293.
Vazsonyi, A. T., Hibbert, J., R., and Snider, J. B. (2002). Exotic Enterprise No More? Adolescent Reports of Family and Parenting Process in Adolescents From Four Countries. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Vazsonyi, A. T., and Killias, M. (2001). Immigration and crime among youth in Switzerland. Crim. Just. Behav. 28(3): 329–366.
Vazsonyi, A. T., and Pickering, L. E. (2000). Family processes and deviance: A comparison of apprentices and non-apprentices. J. Adolesc. Res. 15(3): 368–391.
Vazsonyi, A. T., Pickering, L. E., Junger, M., and Hessing, D. (2001). An empirical test of A General Theory of Crime: A four-nation comparative study of self-control and the prediction of deviance. J. Res. Crime Delinq. 38(2): 91–131.
Wilkinson, K. (1980). The broken home and delinquent behavior: An alternative interpretation to contradictory findings. In Gottfredson, M., and Hirschi, T. (eds.), Understanding Crime. Sage, Beverly Hills, CA, pp. 21–42.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Vazsonyi, A.T., Pickering, L.E. The Importance of Family and School Domains in Adolescent Deviance: African American and Caucasian Youth. Journal of Youth and Adolescence 32, 115–128 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021857801554
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021857801554