A Social Process Model of Adolescent Deviance: Combining Social Control and Differential Association Perspectives

Abstract

This paper examines social factors associated with changes in 2 forms of adolescent deviance, substance use and delinquency. Using longitudinal data, the research evaluates a model that combines ideas from 2 sociological explanations of crime. The model specifies 2 processes by which conventional social bonds reduce adolescent deviance over time: Strong social bonds indirectly reduce deviance by decreasing associations with deviant peers and by decreasing susceptibility to the negative influences of peers. The results of path analyses, using measures of peer deviance that are based on actual responses from the adolescents' close friends, support the conceptual model. Deviant friendships and susceptibility linked social bonds to both forms of problem behavior. Bonds were more consistently related to friends' substance use than to friends' delinquency. Supplementary analyses within gender subgroups indicate that the deviance of males was more strongly affected by the actions of friends than was deviance of females.