Stressful Life Events and Delinquency Escalation in Early Adolescence

• NCJ Number: 178479
• Journal: Criminology Volume: 37 Issue: 2 Dated: May 1999 Pages: 343-373
• Author(s): John P. Hoffmann; Felicia G. Cerbone
• Date Published: May 1999
• Length: 31 pages
• Grant Number(s): DA05617
• Sponsoring Agency: National Institute on Drug Abuse
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: An earlier version of this article was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology, San Diego, November 1997.

Annotation

In describing and examining one potential pathway of delinquency escalation in early and mid-adolescence, this study draws on Agnew's general strain theory and research on adolescent stress to describe a significant transitory stage of the life course.

Abstract

A key organizing principle that underlies the proposed pathway is that although stressful life events are highly variable among adolescents, the experience of a persistent or increasing number over time can lead to an escalation of delinquency. Using 4 years of sequential data from the Family Health Study (651 adolescents aged 11-14 during year one), this study estimates a hierarchical growth-curve model that emphasizes the effects of life events on delinquency. The measure of stressful life events was a time-varying covariate and was based on a variety of events reported by the adolescents during the 4 years under investigation. They were measured each year by a checklist of 16 items derived from the Junior High Life Experiences Survey. The events included incidents that occurred in the 12 months prior to each annual survey, such as death, illness, or accidents among family or friends; changes in school or residence; parental divorce or separation; and family financial problems. The number of life events reported by the respondents ranged from 0 to 10 per year, although over three- fourths of them reported no more than three events in any year. A clinical diagnosis of parental substance use disorder or depression was also included in the life event checklist for each of the annual measures. The model developed assumes that delinquency is distributed as an overdispersed Poisson random variable. The results indicate that experiencing a relatively high number of life events over time is related to a significant "growth" of delinquency, but that this relationship is not affected by sex, family income, self-esteem, or mastery. 2 figures, 3 tables, and 87 references