TY - JOUR
PY - 2022//
TI - Patterns of school victimization and problem behaviors: longitudinal associations with socioeconomic well-being and criminal justice involvement
JO - Child and youth care forum
A1 - Heath, Ryan D.
A1 - Tan, Kevin
A1 - Guzzy, Jennifer S.
A1 - Henry, Briyana
SP - 439
EP - 461
VL - 51
IS - 2
N2 - 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.
METHOD: 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.
Language: en
LA - en SN - 1053-1890 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10566-021-09633-1 ID - ref1 ER -