Explaining Delinquency and Drug Use

• NCJ Number: 128886
• Author(s): D S Elliott; D Huizinga; S S Ageton
• Date Published: 1982
• Length: 190 pages
• Grant Number(s): 78JN-AX-0003; MH 27552
• Sponsoring Agency: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP); National Institute of Mental Health
• Corporate Author: Behavioral Research Instit
• Sale Source: National Institute of Justice/; NCJRS Photocopy Services
• Publication Type: Survey
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: National Youth Survey, Project Report No. 21

Annotation

Five annual surveys of a national sample of youth who were aged 11 through 17 in 1976 formed the basis of an analysis of the reasons for juvenile delinquency and drug abuse.

Abstract

The youths were interviewed each year from 1977 through 1981 and were asked about their involvement in delinquent behavior and drug use during the previous calendar year. The initial sample consisted of 1,725 youths; 99 had been lost by the time of the 1979 survey. The data were used to test a model that combined strain and control theories. The results showed that the direct cause of delinquency and drug abuse is bonding to deviant peers. The effects of strain and conventional bonding were almost totally indirect, mediated by the level of bonding to deviant peers. Thus, weak conventional bonding did not lead to delinquency or drug use in the absence of involvement with delinquent peers, whereas bonding to delinquent peers increased the risks of delinquency and drug use for all youth. Findings indicated the need for slight modifications of the original model and supported the usefulness of mixed theoretical models in explaining delinquency and drug abuse. Tables, figures, appended data tables, and 143 references