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Deviant Peers and Delinquency: The Influence of Classroom Context

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The Psychological Well-being of East Asian Youth

Part of the book series: Quality of Life in Asia ((QLAS,volume 2))

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Abstract

In recent years, researchers have looked toward distinguishing the routes whereby some daily social contexts influence adolescent development. In considering these contexts, this study identified three hypotheses to illustrate the theoretical assumptions related to the mechanism for adolescents to develop delinquency. The results, essentially, fully supported the theoretical hypotheses. The most important finding of the results is that, for Taiwanese adolescent students, the classroom context did have a crucial influence on their development of conduct problems. In addition, the HLM analyses indicated that individual-level deviant peers is positively associated with adolescent students’ delinquency. Furthermore, we also found that the effect of classroom-level delinquency amplifies the effect of deviant peers on adolescents’ delinquency. These findings offer insight into understanding the importance of classroom contexts for Taiwanese and even for East Asian students in general.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, 128 Sec. 2 Academia Rd., Nankang, Taipei, 11529, Taiwan

    Chyi-In Wu

  2. Department of Sociology, The University of Georgia, 113 Baldwin Hall, Athens, GA, 30602-1611, USA

    Man-Kit Lei

Authors
  1. Chyi-In Wu
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  2. Man-Kit Lei
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Correspondence to Chyi-In Wu .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Research Fellow, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan R.O.C.

    Chin-Chun Yi

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Wu, CI., Lei, MK. (2012). Deviant Peers and Delinquency: The Influence of Classroom Context. In: Yi, CC. (eds) The Psychological Well-being of East Asian Youth. Quality of Life in Asia, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4081-5_5

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