Individual in Context: The Role of Impulse Control on the Association between the Home, School, and Neighborhood Developmental Contexts and Adolescent Delinquency

• NCJ Number: 251848
• Journal: Journal of Youth and Adolescence Volume: 46 Issue: 7 Dated: July 2017 Pages: 1488-1502
• Author(s): Adam Fine; Alissa Mahler; Laurence Stein; Paul J. Frick; Elizabeth Cauffman
• Date Published: July 2017
• Length: 15 pages
• Sponsoring Agency: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP)
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical); Report (Study/Research); Report (Grant Sponsored); Program/Project Description
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This study examined key interactions among baseline impulse control and the home, school, and neighborhood contexts in relation to delinquency within the following 6 months, using a racially diverse (Latino, 46 percent; Black, 37 percent; White 15 percent; other race,2 percent 2 ; percent) sample of 1,216 first-time, male, juvenile offenders from the longitudinal Crossroads Study.

Abstract

Social ecological theories and decades of supporting research suggest that contexts exert a powerful influence on adolescent delinquency. Individual traits, such as impulse control, also pose a developmental disadvantage to adolescents through increasing risk of delinquency; however, such individual differences may also predispose some youth to struggle more in adverse environments, but also to excel in enriched environments. Despite the prominence of impulse control in both developmental and criminological literatures, researchers are only beginning to consider impulse control as an individual characteristic that may affect developmental outcomes in response to environmental input. (Publisher abstract modified)