Youth opinions matter: retaining human capital in Coos County

As Coos County youth age, their attachment to their communities may deteriorate. This brief presents new data from the Coos Youth Study. This research indicates efforts to keep young people in Coos may benefit from efforts to show students that their views matter to adults in their communities

Perceived Community Cohesion and the Stress Process in Youth

Using survey data from two youth samples, one rural and one urban, we examine the role and significance of perceived community cohesion in the stress process. In particular, we assess the extent to which community attachment and detachment are related to depressed mood, problem substance use, and delinquency net of social statuses, stress exposure, and personal attributes. In addition, we explore the degree to which those dimensions of community cohesion explain or condition the links between the above stress-process components (e.g., social statuses, stress exposure, and personal attributes) and well-being. We find remarkably similar results across samples: community attachment is related to lower odds of problem substance use and delinquency; community detachment is related to higher levels of depressed mood, problem substance use, and delinquency; and community attachment buffers the link between stress and problem substance use. With respect to depressed mood, however, the rural youth show greater vulnerability to stress than the urban youth and unique benefits from community attachment compared to the latter. Our findings highlight the roles of community attachment and detachment in the stress process and underscore the importance of each for youth well-being in rural and urban settings

Simple guide to starting a research group

Conducting cutting-edge research and scholarship becomes more complicated with each passing year; forming a collaborative research group offers a way to navigate this increasing complexity. Yet many individuals whose work might benefit from the formation of a collaborative team may feel overwhelmed by the prospect of attempting to build and maintain a research group. We propose this simple guide for starting and maintaining such an enterprise

Do Adolescents Engage in Delinquency to Attract the Social Attention of Peers? An Extension and Longitudinal Test of the Social Reinforcement Hypothesis

Although social-learning theory remains among the dominant perspectives in micro-level research concerning the causes of delinquency, research has yet to provide an adequate test of its social-reinforcement component using the methods required by the logic of operant psychology. The present article discusses the limits of existing attempts to test the social-reinforcement hypothesis, offers a new approach for testing it, and describes the use of panel data to provide such a test. In particular, the author examined (1) whether delinquency increases the amount of time a perpetrator\u27s peers choose to spend with him or her, (2) whether such attention serves as a direct reinforcement prompting further delinquency from the perpetrator, and (3) whether such attention serves as a vicarious reinforcement prompting delinquency from audience members in proportion to their desire for informal socializing among peers. The results suggest support for vicarious, but not direct, social reinforcement

Differential association and substance use: Assessing the Role of Discriminant Validity, Socialization, and Selection in Traditional Empirical Tests

Although the correlation between personal and perceived peer substance use remains among the strongest in criminology, the discriminant validity of personal and perceived peer measures remains to be formally tested via confirmatory factor analysis. Further, only limited research has attempted to discern whether substance users seek out similar others rather than being influenced by the substance use that they perceive among their peers. Finally, research has yet to isolate, via panel analysis, the reciprocal relationship between personal substance use and perceived peer attitudes. The present study addresses each of these issues using National Youth Survey data. Results reveal that personal substance-related behavior and perceived peer behavior/attitudes bear only minimal discriminant validity and that, as predicted by Gottfredson and Hirschi’sGeneral Theory of Crime, selection provides a better explanation of their correlation than does socialization

Deconstructing “Force and Fraud”: An Empirical Assessment of the Generality of Crime

Gottfredson and Hirschi (A General Theory of Crime, Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA, 1990) have proposed a general theory of crime to explain a set of behaviors they refer to as “acts of force and fraud.” Central to their theory is the claim that force and fraud are both manifestations of the individual\u27s unrestrained pursuit of short-term gratification. At the same time, research from numerous disciplines suggests that the correlates of violence differ somewhat from those of property crime. The present study therefore uses data from the National Youth Survey to explore whether force and fraud can legitimately be viewed as manifestations of a single underlying construct among American adolescents. Overall, findings from confirmatory factor analyses suggest that they cannot. Rather, they suggest that multi-factor models of force and fraud improve significantly upon the fit of single-factor models and that force and fraud may therefore reflect overlapping, but empirically distinct, constructs

A Life-course Perspective on the “Gateway Hypothesis”

Drawing on stress and life-course perspectives and using panel data from 1,286 south Florida young adults, we assess three critical questions regarding the role of marijuana in the “gateway hypothesis.” First, does teen marijuana use independently (causally) affect subsequent use of more dangerous substances? Second, if so, does that effect apply to the abuse of other illicit substances, as defined by the DSM-IV, or only to the use of such substances? Finally, does any causal effect of teen marijuana use survive beyond adolescence, or is it a short-term effect that subsides as adolescents transition to adulthood? Our results indicate a moderate relation between early teen marijuana use and young adult abuse of other illicit substances; however, this association fades from statistical significance with adjustments for stress and life-course variables. Likewise, our findings show that any causal influence of teen marijuana use on other illicit substance use is contingent upon employment status and is short-term, subsiding entirely by the age of 21. In light of these findings, we urge U.S. drug control policymakers to consider stress and life-course approaches in their pursuit of solutions to the “drug problem.

Do “bad boys” really get the girls? Delinquency as a cause and consequence of dating behavior among adolescents

Drawing on Zahavi\u27s (1975) handicap principle, we suggest that delinquency and other risk-taking behavior might be seen as evidence of positive, adaptive qualities such as nerve and bravery. Drawing on Akers\u27 (1998) social learning theory, we also suggest that potential romantic partners might be attracted to such traits and that this romantic attention might reinforce delinquency and other risk-taking behavior. Using data from the first and third waves of the National Youth Survey, we test these assertions with a series of longitudinal OLS and contemporaneous-effects covariance structure models. Results suggest that delinquency serves to increase romantic involvement and that romantic involvement may provide vicarious, but not necessarily direct, reinforcement for delinquency among both male and female adolescents