SOC355H1 Chapter Notes -Longitudinal Study, Research Question, Symbolic Interactionism
Document Summary
Adolescents spend a lot of time with their friends and are more strongly influenced by them during this period than any other time in the life course. Delinquency has been proven to typically involve co-offenders. Therefore, study of peers" influence on delinquency is crucial to understand patterns and processes that shape crime. Previous data provides measures of friends" participation in delinquency based on friends" actual responses, rather than relying on the respondent perceptions of friend"s behavior (could lead to skewed/ bias perceptions) This poses methodological limitations of the research (and over-emphasis on normative influence), while the present study uses improved methods. Mediating role for peer delinquency is limited in both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. Greatest factors were public assistance, importance of religion, and grae point average. Peer delinquency only accounted for 10-20% for relationships of these variables to respondent"s delinquency. Therefore peer delinquency is not as big of an influence than previously thought. Results supported the validity of opportunity explanation.
