Measurement Properties of the Communities That Care<Superscript>®</Superscript> Youth Survey Across Demographic Groups

Prevention science has produced information about risk and protective factors that predict adolescent drug use and related problem behaviors. This paper investigates the Communities That Care Youth Survey that measures multiple risk and protective factors. Using a sample of 172,628 students who participated in surveys administered in seven states in 1998, analyses were conducted to test the factor structure of these risk and protective factors and to test the equivalence of the factor models across five racial/ethnic groups (African Americans, Asians or Pacific Islanders, Caucasians, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans), four grade levels (6th, 8th, 10th, and 12th) and both gender groups. Results support the construct validity of the surveys risk and protective factor scales and indicate that the measures are equally reliable across males and females and five racial/ethnic groups. Implications of these findings for science-based prevention planning are discussed.     

Preventing Crime and Violence Through Communities that Care

The author, among others, has developed a system that empowers communities to organise themselves to engage in outcome focused prevention planning. This system for prevention planning using the tools of prevention science is Communities That Care (CTC). In a collaborative US project 22 reliable and valid archival indicators of 12 major risk factors that predict rates of adolescent drug use at the county level were found. This collaborative project has also developed a validated school survey that measures risk, protection, delinquency and drug use outcomes reliably across states and ethnic groups. It allows a diagnosis of risk and protection levels in any geographical area, from a state to a neighbourhood. With these tools, communities can organise themselves to engage in outcome focused prevention planning, objectively assess their own profiles of risk and protection, and choose and implement effective strategies to address their unique strengths and needs. In Europe CTC has been currently introduced in England and Wales, Scotland and in the Netherlands.     

Race and sex differences in the measurement of risk for drug use

The study uses data from 2018 Black and White males and females and latent-variable structural equations techniques to examine group differences in the measurement of risk factors for substance use. First, the equivalence of measurement models for four demographic groups is examined separately for 12 risk factors and 2 measures of substance use. Then these 14 measures are correlated with five external criteria to assess measurement validity. Results imply that one measurement model fits the data for 11 of the 12 risk factors. For one risk factor (Peer Drug Modeling) and the two drug use scales, observed group differences in the factor loadings stemmed from differences in the distributions of a few drug-related items which were infrequently endorsed, especially by Black females. No meaningful group difference in the validity coefficients relating the scales to external criteria were observed. The results are optimistic for the study of race and sex differences in the correlates of substance use. But research on group differences in the prediction of rare behaviors should examine group differences in distributions which may effect measurement differently for different groups.     

Ethnic differences in the relationship between psychopathy and (re)offending in a sample of juvenile delinquents

The present study focused on the relationship between psychopathy and delinquency in a multiethnic sample of juvenile offenders (N=207, n=105 native Dutch, and n=102 immigrants) referred to a treatment program. Aims were (1) to examine the cross-ethnic equivalence of the Antisocial Process Screening Device (APSD); (2) to compare the mean levels of psychopathic traits in native Dutch and immigrant juvenile delinquents and (3) the strength of the associations between psychopathic traits and delinquency in both the native Dutch and immigrant samples. Measurement invariance was established for APSD factors assessing callous-unemotional (CU) traits and impulsivity. However, there were ethnic differences in the factor structure of narcissism. No differences were found between ethnic groups in mean levels of CU traits and impulsivity. Finally, the association between impulsivity and self-reported delinquency was stronger for native Dutch than for immigrant juveniles. Further research is needed in order to make the treatment of juvenile delinquents with psychopathic traits in ethnic minority groups more effective according to the specific needs of these juveniles.     

Subgroup differences and implications for contemporary risk-need assessment with juvenile offenders

Risk-need assessment is widely accepted as best practice with juvenile offenders and is underpinned by a healthy research literature on risk assessment inventories. Previous studies have found both similarities and differences on risk measures when gender and racial/ethnic subgroups have been compared. Differential validity has been examined, but differential prediction has been overlooked. The current study undertook gender and ethnic comparisons for a large sample (n = 3568) of community-based juvenile offenders who were evaluated using the Australian Adaptation of the Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory (YLS/CMI-AA). Analyses showed various gender and ethnic differences at the item level, across domain scores and on the total inventory score, but not for validity indices. However, 1-year reoffending rates for youth in three classification categories (low, moderate, high) varied by gender and ethnicity. The findings were related to contemporary understandings of the risk factors for offending and the dynamics of crime for gender/ethnic subgroups. It is argued that in spite of these subgroup differences, a generic inventory such as the YLS/CMI-AA can be used fairly with various subgroups. Recommendations for how this could be accomplished are provided. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Parenting Styles and Juvenile Delinquency: Exploring Gendered Relationships

We use the NLSY97 dataset to examine the parenting‐delinquency relationship and how it is conditioned by parents’ gender, controlling for youths’ gender. Generally, neglectful and authoritarian parenting styles were associated with the highest levels of delinquency in youths. When the sample was split by parent gender, authoritarianism held up across both groups, but permissive and neglectful parenting was only significant for fathers. Independent of parenting style, boys have higher delinquency levels than girls. The strength and magnitude of this relationship is nearly identical in separate equations for mothers and fathers. Parental attachment was not a significant protective factor against delinquency for either mothers or fathers.     

LOW SELF-CONTROL AND OPPORTUNITY: TESTING THE GENERAL THEORY OF CRIME AS AN EXPLANATION FOR GENDER DIFFERENCES IN DELINQUENCY*

This research tests Gottfredson and Hirschi's general theory of crime as an explanation for gender differences in the delinquency of approximately 2,000 Canadian secondary school students. Separate psychological factors, including a preference for risk seeking, impulsivity, temper, present oriented, and carelessness, are used as measures of self-control, and additional measures of the construct are taken from the frequency of self-reported smoking and drinking. Elements of delinquent opportunity are controlled for by including measures of parental/adult super-vision. These measures and their interactions are used to predict self-reported general delinquency, property offenses, violence, and drug offenses. Results provide partial support for the general theory, revealing relationships between measures of self-control and delinquency that vary by magnitude across genders and for different offense types. Implications for the generality of the theory are discussed.     

Validity and reliability of the Self-Report Delinquency among a sample of at-risk youths

Self-Report Delinquency scales have formed the basis of much understanding of juvenile delinquency today, but further improvement and extensive measurement research on self-report measures of crime are needed. The present study examined the psychometric properties of the shorter general delinquency scale version of the classic commonly used Self-Report of Delinquency (SRD) measure created for the original National Youth Survey (NYS) using a sample (N = 412) of male (n = 200) and female (n = 212) at-risk Portuguese youths. The shorter version of the SRD demonstrated satisfactory validity and reliability, namely in terms of its latent one-factor structure, internal consistency, convergent validity, divergent validity, concurrent criterion validity and discriminant groups validity that overall justifies its use among this population. The shorter general delinquency scale version of the SRD is a valid and reliable measure from a modern psychometric perspective that can be used with at-risk youths.     

A Test of Generalizability of the Social Development Model Across Gender and Income Groups with Longitudinal Data from the Elementary School Developmental Period

The social development model (SDM) is a theory of behavior that has proven useful in explaining the etiology of delinquency, violence, and substance use among adolescents as well as early antisocial behavior among pre-adolescents. A further test of the model is its generalizability across population groups. A section of the SDM representing prosocial influences in the etiology of problem behavior was compared for boys and girls and for children from low- and non low-income families using three waves of child, parent and teacher survey data on a sample of 851 elementary school students. Multiple group structural equation modeling was used to assess differences across groups in both measurement of model constructs and hypothesized structural paths between constructs. The results indicate overall similarity in the reliability of measurement models and validity of structural models.     

Family Processes and Delinquency

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between family processes and delinquency. A multiethnic sample was utilized to determine whether the impact of parental attachment, involvement and supervision on delinquency is consistent across Latino, White and African American youth. Analysis of two waves of data from the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth indicates that relationships are not identical across ethnic and gender groups. Group differences uncovered by the current study are consistent with earlier research on family processes and suggest that both ethnicity and gender are important considerations when estimating the influence of the family on delinquent behavior. Theoretical and policy implications of group differences are discussed.     

SELF-REPORTED DELINQUENCY AND A COMBINED DELINQUENCY SERIOUSNESS SCALE BASED ON BOYS,MOTHERS, AND TEACHERS: CONCURRENT AND PREDICTIVE VALIDITY FOR AFRICAN-AMERICANS AND CAUCASIANS*

The Pittsburgh Youth Study is a prospective longitudinal survey of three samples of Pittsburgh boys (each containing about 500 boys) initially studied in first, fourth, and seventh grades. The first two data collection waves yielded self-reported delinquency and combined delinquency seriousness scores (the combined scores based on information from boy, mother, and teacher) for the middle sample (up to an average age of 10.7 years) and oldest sample (up to an average age of 13.9 years). These scores were compared with records of petitions to the Allegheny County Juvenile Court for delinquency offenses before and up to six years after the assessments. The area under the ROC curve was used as a measure of validity. Concurrent validity was higher than predictive validity. The combined scale had similar concurrent validity but greater predictive validity than the self-report scale, and the combined scale also identified a greater number of boys as serious delinquents. Concurrent validity for admitting offenses was higher for Caucasians, but concurrent validity for admitting arrests was higher for African-Americans. There were no consistent ethnic differences in predictive validity. There was an increase in predictive validity, for both African-Americans and Caucasians, by combining self-report data with information from other sources. Afrer controlling for delinquency measures, African-Americans were more likely than Caucasians to be petitioned in the future, but not in the past. In this research, ethnic differences in official delinquency were partly attributable to ethnic differences in delinquent behavior and were not attributable to differential ethnic attrition or differential ethnic validity of measures of delinquent behavior.     

GIRLS,BOYS, AND SCHOOLS: GENDER DIFFERENCES IN THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN SCHOOL‐RELATED FACTORS AND STUDENT DEVIANCE*

Research has identified several student and school characteristics that might be altered to reduce student deviance. Most of this research, however, fails to address whether gender moderates these relationships; that is, most studies do not distinguish between the effect of school‐related factors on boys' and girls' delinquency and drug use. In the current study, data from a nationally representative sample of 13,450 students in 253 public, nonalternative, secondary schools are used to examine hierarchical linear models of the relationships between student bonding, communal school organization, and male and female delinquency and drug use. Gender differences in the overall model of relationships are found as are differences in the relationships between student bonding elements and delinquency. Gender differences are not found in the relationships between student bonding elements and drug use, nor in the relationships between communal school organization elements and delinquency and drug use. Implications for theory and prevention are discussed.     

Gender Differences in Delinquency and Situational Action Theory: A Partial Test

This paper investigates to what extent a recent perspective in criminology, Situational Action Theory, is valid for both males and females and to what extent elements from the theory explain gender differences in delinquency. Data are used from the first (N?=?843) and second (N?=?616) wave of the Study of Peers, Activities, and Neighborhoods, which included detailed data about core elements of Situational Action Theory (morality, self-control, unsupervised peer activity and peer deviancy), proposed indirect causes (bonds with parents and school, parental monitoring) and self-reported delinquency. Cross-sectional and lagged Tobit regression analyses show that the core relations with delinquency are not significantly different between boys and girls and that the elements of Situational Action Theory are able to explain gender differences in delinquency for a substantial part. However, there is still a remaining independent effect of gender on current and lagged delinquency.     

Same Routines,Different Effects: Gender,Leisure, and Young Offending

The current study seeks to extend routine activity theory by examining how gender conditions the relationship between leisure activities and adolescent delinquency. Using OLS regression with a sample of high school students from Toronto (n = 2,209), we find that (1) engaging in more unstructured and unsupervised activities with peers is associated with delinquency more strongly for boys than for girls, but is associated with substance use equally across gender; (2) this pattern is likely due to gender differences in the locations or contexts of leisure activities; and (3) prosocial leisure activities are associated with less delinquency only for boys. In general, routine activity theory appears apt at explaining the substance use of boys and girls, but is less capable of explaining the property and violent offending of girls. We discuss our findings and their implications for the growing body of research extending routine activity theory to explain gender differences in delinquency.     

Differential Effects of Parental Controls on Adolescent Substance Use: For Whom is the Family Most Important?

Objective

Social control theory assumes that the ability of social constraints to deter juvenile delinquency will be invariant across individuals. This paper tests this hypothesis and examines the degree to which there are differential effects of parental controls on adolescent substance use.

Methods

Analyses are based on self-reported data from 7,349 10th-grade students and rely on regression mixture models to identify latent classes of individuals who may vary in the effects of parental controls on drug use.

Results

All parental controls were significantly related to adolescent drug use, with higher levels of control associated with less drug use. The effects of instrumental parental controls (e.g., parental management strategies) on drug use were shown to vary across individuals, while expressive controls (e.g., parent/child attachment) had uniform effects in reducing drug use. Specifically, poor family management and more favorable parental attitudes regarding children’s drug use and delinquency had stronger effects on drug use for students who reported greater attachment to their neighborhoods, less acceptance of adolescent drug use by neighborhood residents, and fewer delinquent peers, compared to those with greater community and peer risk exposure. Parental influences were also stronger for Caucasian students versus those from other racial/ethnic groups, but no differences in effects were found based on students’ gender or commitment to school.

Conclusions

The findings demonstrate support for social control theory, and also help to refine and add precision to this perspective by identifying groups of individuals for whom parental controls are most influential. Further, they offer an innovative methodology that can be applied to any criminological theory to examine the complex forces that result in illegal behavior.     

Why are some ethnic groups more violent than others? The role of friendship network's ethnic composition

Ethnic differences in violent behavior can be found in official crime statistics, as well as in surveys on juvenile delinquency. To explain these differences, research mainly focuses on factors like parental violence, violence legitimizing norms of masculinity, or socio-economic status. Little research has examined the role of friendship network's ethnic composition on ethnic differences in violent behavior, although different sociological and criminological theories suggest that the composition of friendship networks can play an important role for attitudes and behavior of its members. Using data of a survey conducted in 2006 among all ninth-grade pupils in Hanover (Germany), we investigated the influence of friendship network's ethnic composition on violent behavior in general, and on ethnic differences in violent behavior in particular. Due to the specific sampling procedure, it was also possible to look for neighborhood effects both on (ethnic differences in) juvenile delinquency and friendship network composition. Findings indicate that there are significant differences in the network composition across the ethnic groups. After controlling for these network characteristics, ethnic differences in violent behavior disappeared. Furthermore, the results show that the friendship network's ethnic composition also depends on community characteristics.     

SOCIAL PRACTICES OF GENDER: HOW GENDER RELATES TO DELINQUENCY IN THE EVERYDAY LIVES OF HIGH‐RISK YOUTHS*

Conceptualizing gender as social practices and using those practices as the unit of analysis, I reanalyzed data from a study on gender and delinquency. The analysis disclosed six social practices that intertwined with delinquent activities, constraining female delinquency while enabling and rewarding male delinquency. Only a few differences emerged among three ethnic groups. This analysis suggests that the salient dimensions of gender as a correlate of delinquency include male dominance, differences in routine daily activities, variations in sexual interests and transition to adulthood, and an ideology defining crime as male activity and childcare as female activity. The conclusion presents implications for general theoretical work on delinquency.     

Comparing Gender Across Risk and Recidivism in Nonviolent Offenders

The purpose of this study was to examine whether gender differences exist in the rate, type, and general predictors of recidivism for nonviolent offenders. A total of 328 male and female Texas state jail offenders were matched on current offense, total number of arrests, age, and race. Contrary to previous findings, the results demonstrated no significant gender differences for recidivism rates, although significant gender differences were found for those who had reoffended with property and prostitution offenses. Similar to previous findings, age and total arrests were significant predictors for both male and female offenders. In the current sample, substance abuse was predictive for male offenders only. Although no gender differences were found across the recidivism predictors of static and criminogenic need, the protective factors of positive social support significantly predicted recidivism for female offenders and not male offenders. The current results add to the understanding of gender differences for the assessment, risk prediction, and treatment of offenders.     

Risk and protective factors of delinquency that are sensitive to migration and culture

ABSTRACT

Present evidence regarding widely used risk assessment tools suggests that such tools may have inferior predictive validity for offenders with a migration background (MB), especially from Turkey and Arab countries. Based on a thorough literature review, we investigated additional risk and protective factors via a postdictive correlational study design. We assumed that delinquency is induced by discrimination, a conflict of values, norms of honour, a disapproval of sexual self-determination, and antisemitism. In contrast, we expected social support to diminish the risk of criminal behaviour. The sampling took place inside and outside prison, where adult men with an Arab or Turkish MB (n?=?140) filled out a questionnaire. Individual norms of honour (r?=?.27?.41), antisemitism (r?=?.31?.37), and a disapproval of sexual self-determination (r?=?.23?.26) were positively correlated with delinquency. The best predictor was the individual’s perception of friends’ norms of honour (r?=?.34?.56). However, only a few significant correlations were found for a perception of individual discrimination (r?=?.08?.14) and an internal conflict of values (r?=?.11?.15), whereas global discrimination (r?=?.20?.29) clearly emerged as a risk factor for delinquency. Social support by nondelinquent peers could be confirmed as having a protective influence against delinquency (r=?.25?.27). Theoretical and practical implications for risk assessment are discussed.     

The Risk of Informal Socializing with Peers: Considering Gender Differences Across Predatory Delinquency and Substance Use

Previous research has demonstrated that adolescents who socialize with peers in unstructured and unsupervised settings are more likely to engage in deviant behavior. Research on this front has generally pooled adolescents together, suggesting that it is a risk for nearly all youth across a wide array of deviant outcomes. The current study instead hypothesizes that the strength of the relationship between time use and different forms of deviance varies for male and female adolescents. Specifically, it proposes that unstructured and unsupervised socializing with peers will be a significantly stronger risk for predatory delinquency (i.e. violent and property crime) for male adolescents than for females, whereas it will be an equivalent risk across gender for substance use. Analyses using the AddHealth data support this hypothesis. The discussion considers the implications of these results.