ORCID
Ryan D. Heath: 0000-0002-1656-018X
Document Type
Manuscript
Date
6-2022
Keywords
School victimization, School problem behaviors, Educational attainment, Poverty, Violence, Criminal justice
Language
English
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Kate Epstein and Beighley Thornock for their helpful suggestions and input on a previous version of this manuscript.
Disciplines
Community Psychology | Developmental Psychology | Educational Sociology | School Psychology | Social Work
Description/Abstract
BACKGROUND: Middle school victimization and problem behaviors often co-occur, but little is known about patterns of co-occurrence, or how long effects persist into adulthood.
OBJECTIVE: Drawing on general strain theory, this study aimed to identify sex-specific profiles of victimization and problem behaviors during middle school, and their association with socioeconomic, violence, and criminal justice outcomes in young adulthood.
METHODS: Latent class analyses was conducted on data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth - 1997, including subsamples of seventh grade females (n=529) and males (n=494).
RESULTS: Two classes were identified for females: (1) low-risk and (2) high-risk; these classes were associated with outcomes in the hypothesized directions. For males, however, there were three groups: (1) low-risk, which reported low rates of victimization and problem behaviors; (2) victimized, with high victimization but low rates of problem behaviors; and (3) high-risk, with high rates of both victimization and problem behaviors. Interestingly, victimized males had socioeconomic and criminal justice outcomes similar to low-risk males, but rates of assault comparable to high-risk males. For example, victimized males were five times more likely to obtain a college degree than high-risk males (27.1% versus 4.6%) and three times less likely to live in poverty (9.5% versus 25.9%), but only slightly less likely to commit assault (41.7% versus 59.8%). However, there was alarming over-representation of Black youth in the high-risk groups.
CONCLUSIONS: Findings emphasize the urgency with which schools and community agencies need to address victimization and problem behaviors among adolescents, but simultaneously target structural racism.
Recommended Citation
Heath, R. D., Tan, K., Guzzy, J. S., & Henry, B. (2022). Patterns of school victimization and problem behaviors: Longitudinal associations with socioeconomic well-being and criminal justice involvement. Child & Youth Care Forum, 51(2), 439-461. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10566-021-09633-1
Source
submission
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Included in
Community Psychology Commons, Developmental Psychology Commons, Educational Sociology Commons, School Psychology Commons, Social Work Commons
