Social bonding and juvenile male violence: An empirical investigation

Abstract

This paper examined the relationships of several social bonding components and juvenile violence. Specifically, the components as operationalized in this study are rejection by parents, rejection by teachers, and Disaffection from The conventional community. We employed these as predictor variables in a causal model and examined both the direct and indirect effects each of these variables had on juvenile violence. The data were obtained from a 1994 survey of 172 seventh and grade male students in an eastern Ohio urban school system. In order to compare the reliability of the social bond components across racial groups, we conducted separate path analyses for African American youth and white American youth. Differences in the strength of the predictive ability of these variables were found across racial groups. Although rejection by parents proved to be the most significant predictor variable for the African American sample, it was not significant for the white American sample. The findings reveal disaffection with the conventional community to be the most important predictor of violent behavior for the white American sample. The causal model explained more of the variance in violence for the African American sample than for the white American sample. Finally, our findings indicate no difference between the two races as far as the rate of violent behavior is concerned.