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Protecting High-Risk Youth in High-Risk Contexts: Neighborhoods, Parenting, and Victimization

  • Empirical Research
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Abstract

Victimization theories suggest parents can serve as guardians to protect adolescents from victimization, yet findings from studies examining the main effects of parenting variables on adolescent victimization are mixed. Prior research suggests that it is the combination of parental warmth and monitoring that produces the best results across a range of other outcomes. The current study used data collected from a sample of serious adolescent offenders as part of the Pathways to Desistance study (N = 888; 16.1% female; mean age = 15.92). Using the first two waves (baseline and 6-month time points) of data, we estimated a series of negative binomial regression models to observe the main and interactive effects of parental warmth and monitoring on adolescent victimization and the potential moderating influence of neighborhood disorder. The results indicate that the combination of warmth and monitoring reduces adolescent victimization, and that parental warmth may be particularly important for protecting adolescents in neighborhoods with moderate-high levels of disorder.

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Notes

  1. The publicly available Pathways to Desistance dataset does not include item-level data. All reliabilities are based on the full sample reported by the study authors in the documentation when available (Mulvey 2013). Means, standard deviations, and ranges are based on the current study sample.

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Authors’ Contributions

M. T. conceived of the study, participated in its design, and drafted the manuscript. J. R. conceived of the study, participated in its design, performed statistical analyses, and helped to draft the manuscript. M. H. helped to draft the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Data Sharing Declaration

This study uses public-use data from the Pathways to Desistance study. The Pathways data are archived at the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) at the University of Michigan and can be accessed at http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/studies/29961.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Texas at San Antonio, 501 W. Cesar E. Chavez Blvd., San Antonio, TX, 78207, USA

    Marie Skubak Tillyer & Marissa E. Hinton

  2. University of Central Florida, 12805 Pegasus Drive, Bldg. 80, Suite 311, Orlando, FL, 32816-1600, USA

    James V. Ray

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  1. Marie Skubak Tillyer
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Correspondence to Marie Skubak Tillyer.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed Consent

The Pathways to Desistance data were collected using informed consent procedures and parent consent was obtained for all participants under the age of 18 at the time of enrollment.

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Tillyer, M.S., Ray, J.V. & Hinton, M.E. Protecting High-Risk Youth in High-Risk Contexts: Neighborhoods, Parenting, and Victimization. J Youth Adolescence 47, 2027–2040 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-018-0832-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-018-0832-7

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