Effects of Parenting and Peer Variables on Delinquency for Early and Late Onset Offenders

• NCJ Number: 180432
• Author(s): Terence P. Thornberry; Marvin D. Krohn; Nancy Jakubowyc; Alan J. Lizotte; Carolyn Smith
• Date Published: October 1998
• Length: 20 pages
• Sponsoring Agency: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP)
• Corporate Author: Hindelang Criminal Justice Research Ctr
• Sale Source: NCJRS Photocopy Services; Hindelang Criminal Justice Research Ctr
• Publication Format: Document
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

Data from the Rochester, N.Y., Youth Development Study that began in 1988 formed the basis of a comparison of the influence of parent and peer factors on the earlier and later onset of juvenile delinquency.

Abstract

The study was a multi-wave panel study of the development of drug use and delinquent behavior among adolescents and young adults first interviewed when they were in seventh and eighth grades. The research purposely oversampled youth at high risk for serious delinquency and drug use. Information came from interviews of youths and their main adult caregivers as well as from school, police, court, and social service agency records. The research used two delinquency scales and measures of parental attachment and association with delinquent peers. Results revealed that family and peer variables did not relate to delinquent behavior in fundamentally different ways for early-onset juvenile offenders as compared with later-onset offenders. Findings also produced no support for developmental theories that suggest that early-onset and later-onset offenders require two distinct pathways or explanations for their delinquent behavior. Instead, more similarities than differences existed in the relative predictive power of family and peer variables for the two groups. Tables and 32 references