NCJ Number
116875
Journal
Journal of Quantitative Criminology Volume: 4 Issue: 4 Dated: (December 1988) Pages: 363-381
Date Published
1988
Length
19 pages
Annotation
After demonstrating that some of the fundamental assumptions of the social control model seem to limit its applicability as a theory of delinquency, this study refines the social control model by specifying conditions under which the model predicts different forms of delinquency.
Abstract
The data were collected June 1985 as part of a larger project to assess the needs and problems of youth in a Midwestern city. To measure the attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors of youth in this city, students at all middle schools and high schools were included in the two initial sampling frames. A total of 1,426 middle-school students were surveyed across five schools, and 1,708 high school students were surveyed across six schools. The survey was a self-administered questionnaire that queried students about their attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors within the framework of control theory. Their relationships to parents, peers, and school constituted the focus of the survey, along with multiple measures of delinquency. Family background, health-related behaviors, and social activities were examined as part of a larger needs-assessment study. Logic regression analysis revealed that the model that best explains personal crime differs from the model that best explains property crime. Also, certain components of the model were more powerful predictors of criminal behavior for different age-gender groups. The importance of model specification is shown, and the implications for social control theory are discussed. 3 tables, 45 references.