Mind Your Measures and Mechanisms: Adjudicating Normative Influence on Adolescent Delinquency Through Meta-Analysis

• In Event: Roundtable: Youth, Substance Abuse, and Interventions

Abstract

This submission will discuss and elicit useful feedback regarding the theoretical framework, methodological process, and potential preliminary results from my ongoing dissertation work regarding peer and parental normative influences on adolescent delinquency. Specifically, this project seeks to unite posited theoretical mechanisms from the fields of moral/social psychology and criminology regarding the influence of parent, friend, and peer injunctive (beliefs concerning what ought to be done) and descriptive (actual referent behaviors) norms through meta-analytic procedures. Driving research questions include whether average meta-analytic effect estimates vary significantly across types of offending behavior, measurement specificity, and data temporality. While prior topic-adjacent criminological meta-analyses exist regarding overall delinquent effects, they do not focus solely upon adolescent samples. Thus, scholars and professionals looking to understand which types of norms (i.e., injunctive or descriptive) from whom (i.e., parents, friends, or peers) for which offenses (i.e., violent, cyber, sexual, property, etc.) are left wanting for this kind of specificity. The ultimate aim of this study is to help solidify the scholarly understanding of the sources of influence regarding adolescent delinquency, which could aid parents and other professionals more adequately understand and curtail such harmful behavior.

Author

• Mitchell A. Farrell, Indiana University Bloomington