School Bonding, Developmental Assets, and Adolescent Delinquency: A Parallel Process Latent Growth Mediation Model

• In Event: Poster Session II

Abstract

Developmental assets play an important role in the reduction of youth problem behaviors according to positive youth development frameworks (e.g., Lerner, 2000). However, few studies have examined whether changes in developmental assets over time mediate associations of psychosocial factors with youth problem behaviors. This study contributes to this literature using five waves (from age 10-15) of self-report data from 722 German students enrolled in Grade 5 at baseline. Specifically, parallel process latent growth modeling (PPLGM; Cheong, MacKinnon, & Khoo, 2003) was applied to test whether school bonding at baseline was indirectly related to change in adolescent delinquency via change in developmental assets. Delinquency (α= .85-.88) and developmental assets (α= .80-.87) were assessed at waves 3-6; school bonding (α= .77) at wave 1. The final PPLGM model (Χ2(132)= 367.99, CFI=.913, RMSEA=.080, SRMR=.067) showed that school bonding was significantly associated with the initial status of developmental assets and delinquency. Initial status of developmental assets was significantly inversely related to initial status of delinquency. The hypothesized indirect effect of school bonding was not significant, although interesting gender-specific predictive effects emerged in the final PPLGM model. Implications for theory and practice will be discussed.

Authors

• Margit Wiesner, University of Houston

• Ya-Huei Li, University of Houston

• Zhenyuan Zhu, University of Houston