2
This study exams the effects of key family and school-related factors on
predicting arrest in adolescence and early adulthood. While research in this area has been
considerable, it has remained somewhat limited in its sole reliance on teen self-reported
surveys for examining both the influences of delinquency and delinquent behavior itself.
This paper has the advantage of exploring the first hand perspectives of both teens and
their parents, as well as having access to official juvenile and adult arrest records.
Dornbusch and colleagues (2001) have stressed the importance of not solely
relying on youth self-reports, since parent reports may reveal additional meaningful
information, which may not replicate their children. In fact, they found that the parental
response to how attached they felt to the child was a stronger predictor of deviance than
was the child’s report of connectedness to his/her parents.
Additionally, this paper will consider a school factor that has largely been
neglected in the past—participants’ opinions of their school environment (safety and
attitudes about teachers), which may be associated with both levels of delinquency and
commitment to school.
The main research questions to be addressed in this paper include:
1. Are teens who are close to their parents, spend more time with their families, and
whose parents have high educational expectations for the teen less likely to be
arrested?
2. Are teens who get decent grades, spend more time on homework, have high
educational expectations for themselves, who display higher levels of school
commitment, feelings of safety at school, and who have positive perceptions of
their teachers less likely to be arrested?
Convention