Adolescent Routine Activities and Deviance: A Cross-National Study Across Thirty Countries

• In Event: Posters II

Abstract

Routine activities theory (Cohen & Felson, 1979) argues that how and where individuals spend their time impacts whether or not they engage in offending or norm-violating behavior. Applied to adolescents, the theory can be used to examine the relationship between routine daily activities and deviant behavior (Osgood et al., 1996). While there exists a body of literature exploring this relationship, the majority of this has been conducted with data from the United States. Few studies have examined the relationship between routine activities and deviance considering the cultural developmental context (Junger-Tas et al., 2012). Using data from the second International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD-2), a cross-national study of delinquency and victimization of 12 to 15 year-old students in seventh, eighth, and ninth grade classrooms (N= 67,883), the current study tests the relationships between daily routine activities (categorized as family activities, peer activities, solitary activities and community activities) and deviance (using scalar measures of deviance – alcohol use, drug use, vandalism, theft, assault and total deviance) across 30 countries. Hierarchical linear modeling is utilized to test the extent to which the links between routine activities and measures of deviance vary across cultural developmental contexts, where individuals are nested within countries.

Authors

• Erin Leigh Kelley, University of Kentucky

• Alexander T. Vazsonyi, University of Kentucky