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A Test of Three Alternative Hypotheses Regarding the Effects of Early Delinquency on Adolescent Psychosocial Functioning and Substance Involvement

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Abstract

This study compared alternative hypotheses (from general deviance, life course, and developmental psychopathology perspectives) regarding the effects of early adolescent delinquency on psychosocial functioning in family, school, and peer contexts, and on alcohol use. Analyses also examined parent-child negative affective quality, prosocial school orientation, and peer substance use as possible direct predictors of problem substance use. Participants in this longitudinal study, extending from age 11 to age 18, were 429 rural teens (222 girls) and their families. Path model comparisons supported the tenability of a partial mediation model that included mediating pathways and a direct effect of delinquency on alcohol use, as hypothesized by developmental psychopathology. A supplemental analysis controlling for the stability of the family, school, and peer variables revealed that delinquency had less pervasive direct effects on, and a nonsignificant indirect effect through, changes in the mediators over time. Results also showed that peer substance use was a direct positive predictor of problem use.

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Notes

  1. For comparison purposes, analyses also were conducted using listwise deletion of cases, which resulted in an analysis sample of 113 respondents who provided complete data on the study variables. As expected, statistical power was reduced considerably in the listwise analyses. Although the point estimates obtained from the listwise analyses and the missing data analyses were not identical, they did not differ substantially. Thus, the basic patterns of associations obtained using listwise deletion tended to converge with those obtained using the advanced missing data procedures reported herein.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Social Development Research Group, University of Washington, 9725 3rd Avenue NE, Suite 401, Seattle, WA, 98115, USA

    W. Alex Mason

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Julia E. Hitchings & Robert J. McMahon

  3. Partnerships in Prevention Science Institute, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA

    Richard L. Spoth

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  1. W. Alex Mason
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  2. Julia E. Hitchings
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  3. Robert J. McMahon
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  4. Richard L. Spoth
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Correspondence to W. Alex Mason.

Additional information

This research was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (5R01DA018158-02).

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Mason, W.A., Hitchings, J.E., McMahon, R.J. et al. A Test of Three Alternative Hypotheses Regarding the Effects of Early Delinquency on Adolescent Psychosocial Functioning and Substance Involvement. J Abnorm Child Psychol 35, 831–843 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-007-9130-7

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