Correlates of Reduced Misconduct Among Adolescents Facing Adversity

This study examines the association between engagement in daily challenges and school misconduct in a sample of adolescents. Engagement is assessed by the amount of time spent in challenging activities and in terms of subjective ratings of success in daily challenges. Analyses employ data from a study in which adolescents provided self-reports of their immediate experience over the course of 1 week in response to signals generated at random times by alarm wristwatches. Analyses also test whether the number of opportunities for engagement in school activities is associated with misconduct. Because adolescents who face substantial adversity at home or at school are at particular risk for increased misconduct, associations are tested separately for high- and low-adversity adolescents. Results indicate that both time in daily challenge and perceived success in daily challenge are independently associated with reduced misconduct, and that these associations are slightly more pronounced for high (as compared to low) adversity adolescents. Extracurricular opportunities were shown to be associated with reductions in misconduct for high- but not low-adversity adolescents. Among high adversity adolescents, opportunity for engagement and perceived success in daily challenge were not only associated with reduced misconduct in cross-sectional analyses but also were predictive of reductions in misconduct over time.