Within-Individual Differences in Offending from Adolescence to Young Adulthood: A Modified Theoretical Approach to Understanding Academic Achievement and Delinquency

• In Event: Poster Session

Abstract

Adolescence is a particularly turbulent time of life, marked by an increased risk for offending, and complicated by the importance of school and academic success. Schools are a source of multiple stressors which may contribute to the likelihood of offending. A few studies have applied General Strain theory to explain this relationship with mixed results, but recent examinations of General Strain theory, psychological, and educational theory suggest promise for applying General Strain theory to understanding the long-term effects of academic achievement and school strains on offending in the life course. Drawing on psychological theory, education research, and core criminological theory, we suggest that past mixed results could be due to problematic measures of school strains and an inability to measure the subjective meaning of strains. We distinguish contexts where academic failure may be most salient for adolescents to explain risk for offending behavior into young adulthood. Using three waves of the National Longitudinal Adolescent Health Survey, we use linear mixed-effects growth modeling to estimate the effect of school failure and its subjective meaning on offending trajectories for males from adolescence into young adulthood.

Authors

• Janelle Eliasson Nannini, Bowling Green State University

• Jorge M. Chavez, Bowling Green State University