Deviant Lifestyles: A Mediator Linking Family Deviance and Low Self-Control to Youth Violence Exposure?

The extent to which established theories of crime are also useful for understanding youth violence exposure has drawn increasing attention in recent years. However, few studies to date have focused on testing mediating mechanisms linking risk factors to youth violence exposure. The aim of this proposed study is to address this gap in the literature, drawing on the general theory of crime and its extensions (e.g., Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990; Schreck et al., 2002, 2004, 2006; Stewart et al., 2004) as well as lifestyles theory (e.g., Hindelang et al., 1978). Using a predominantly ethnic minority sample, a key strength of the study, it was tested whether deviant lifestyles fully or partially mediate the associations of family deviance and low self-control to youth violence exposure.

Cross-sectional data from an ethnically diverse sample of 11th-Graders from a large Southern metropolitan region were used for this study. 233 high school students (39.5% male, 60.5% female; 33% African-American, 54.9% Hispanic, 12% Other) from six public high schools took part in the study. Both active parent consent and student assent were required.

Youth violence exposure was assessed with two indicators, namely witnessing violence (3 items from Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey; e.g., seen someone else get hit, kicked, punched, or beaten up) and violent victimization (3 items from Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey; e.g., been hit, kicked, punched, or beaten up). Levels of self-control were measured with two subscales from the Grasmick et al (1993) self-control scale (i.e., risk-seeking (4 items) and temper/irritability (4 items)), two subscales from the Weinberger Adjustment Inventory (i.e., low responsibility (8 items) and low consideration (7 items); Weinberger & Schwartz, 1990), and one subscale from the DOTS-R (i.e., low task orientation (5 items); Windle & Lerner, 1986).  Family deviance was the sum of antisocial behaviors of the parents and siblings of the youth (11 items). Deviant lifestyles was measured with three indicators, namely, delinquent behaviors (11 items from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and the Rochester Youth Study), substance use (4 items assessing alcohol, marijuana, inhalant, and other drug use), and deviant peers (8 items from the Denver Youth Survey).

Latent variable analysis in Mplus version 7 using robust maximum likelihood estimation indicated that the fully mediated model showed the best fit to the data (χ²=53.04, df=41, p=.099, RMSEA=.036 (90% CI: .000, .060), CFI=.973, TLI=.963, SRMR=.046) and provided support of the hypothesized associations. Implications of the findings for theory and prevention efforts will be discussed.