Gender Differences in Character Strengths, Social Connections, and Beliefs about Crime among Adolescents

Most gang-involved youth inCanada are predominantly males (94%) andbetween the age of 16 and 18 (Youth Gangs inCanada, 2007). However, young adolescent girls are now increasingly seen among youth gangs (Girls, Gangs, andSexual Exploitation inBritish Columbia, 2010). Within the strength-basedframework for research targeting social problems such as youth violence andcriminal gang activities (Tweed, Bhatt, Dooley, Spindlier, Douglas, Viljoen,2011), a study was conducted in local high schools inBritish Columbia;Canada,in which 194 boys and 226 girls aged 12 to 14 participated.The results of thepreliminary analyses of the data indicated several gender differences among theparticipants’ character strengths, social connections, and cognitive beliefspertaining to violence. Boys in comparison to girls, reported a higher level ofself-esteem, and a stronger belief in violence as a way to deal with conflicts.Girls reported higher satisfaction in the area of friendship than boys.Additionally, girls reported higher levels of parental monitoring of where theywere, who they werewith and what they were doing. These preliminary findingssuggest that prevention strategies would serve the youth well when they arederived from a targeted gendered strategies with a focus on a strength-basedapproach for a positive adolescent development

Defining relationships: Comparing Canadians, Chinese and Indians

To examine whether cultural differences exist in defining family, friend, relative, colleague and neighbour, nonstudent samples were drawn from Canada, China and India. The data generated several unexpected findings. (i) The means of the relationship definitions between the Chinese and Canadians were not significantly different. The means between the Chinese and Indians were significantly different. The means between the Canadians and Indians were significantly different. (ii) Females defined their relationships more interdependently than males in the Indian and Canadian samples but not in the Chinese sample. (iii) Definitions were target specific and the order of closeness differed from group to group. (iv) In the Indian and Chinese samples, participants' age was negatively correlated with closeness in defining friends, indicating that a person's perceived closeness with friends changes over the life span. Results of past research using student samples need to be interpreted with caution