Arab Girls at Risk of Victimization: Cultural and Personal Characteristics

Abstract

The current study focuses on teenage girls at risk in Israel’s Arab society (n = 60). Our aim was to explore the differences between them and between girls from the normative population (n = 60) by socio-demographic variables and by factors related to risk behaviors among teens: self-harm, traditionalism, self-control, and aggression. The findings indicate that despite the cultural and social uniqueness, different societies have universal features in common and there are similarities between western and traditional societies. Similar to western research findings, the girls at risk reported more self-harm than girls in a control group, the level of aggression among them was significantly higher than among the control group, and their self-control and traditionalism were lower. While all the girls came from traditional families, most of the at-risk girls defined themselves as less religious in comparison to the control group. The findings indicate the need for an in-depth study to examine factors that may be unique to a traditional religious society, and which are not usually taken into account in studies conducted on modern western societies. This applies mainly to the religiosity variable and to the meaning of the concept of conservatism in different social-cultural contexts.