Peer Delinquency - Subject Baseline

This measure appears in the following time-points: Baseline.

Related Construct

Peer Delinquency and Gang Involvement

Description of Measure

The Peer Delinquent Behavior items are a subset of those used by the Rochester Youth Study (Thornberry et al., 1994) to assess the degree of antisocial activity among the adolescent's peers. There are two dimensions to this scale: Antisocial Behavior (e.g., "During the last six months how many of your friends have sold drugs?") and Antisocial Influence (e.g., "During the last six months how many of your friends have suggested that you should sell drugs?"). The scale contains 19 items to which participants respond on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from "None of them" to "All of them". An additional scale assessing the antisocial activity among the adolescents romantic partner is also computed. Refer to the "Quality of Romantic Relationships" codebook for descriptive information about this scale.

A one-factor CFA model was fit to the Pathways baseline data for each of these two subscales. In each case the fit of the model was acceptable. The following values were produced:

Peer Delinquency-Antisocial behavior (alpha: .92; NFI: .93; NNFI: .92; CFI: .94; RMSEA: .09)
Peer Delinquency-Antisocial influence (alpha: .89; NFI: .95; NNFI: .93; CFI: .96; RMSEA: .07)

There are two computed scores for this measure:

Peer Delinquency-Antisocial behavior [s0prbehv]; the mean rating of the prevalence of friends who engage in the 12 behaviors listed in this section. Data must be contained in 9 of the 12 items in order to compute a valid mean.
Peer Delinquency-Antisocial influence [s0prinfl]; the mean rating of the prevalence of friends who encourage the youth to engage in the seven items listed in this section. Data must be contained in five of the seven items in order to compute a valid mean.

The Resistance to Peer Influence measure contains additional items regarding the subject's peers. Refer to "Psychological Development" construct for more information about the peer influence measure.

Data Issues

Items in this measure capture antisocial behavior within the past six months. This differs from the subject follow-up measure (where the items are limited to antisocial behavior within the recall period), the collateral follow-up (where items are limited to antisocial behavior within the past year), and the release interview (which captures lifetime antisocial behavior).
Items s0pdel19 through s0pdel25 are only asked if the subject had a boyfriend or girlfriend (s0rel103). They were not asked if the subject was married (s0rel102). These items are not used in the computation of any summary variables within this measure but are part of the Quality of Romantic Relationships measure.

References

Thornberry, T.P., Lizotte, A.J., Krohn, M.D., Farnworth, M. & Jang, S.J. (1994). Delinquent peers, beliefs, and delinquent behavior: A longitudinal test of interactional theory. Criminology, 32: 47-83.
Menard, S. and Elliott, D. S. (1996). Prediction of adult success using stepwise logistic regression analysis. A report prepared for the MacArthur Foundation by the MacArthur Chicago-Denver Neighborhood Project.
Elliott, D.S., (1990). National Youth Survey. Institute of Behavioral Science. University of Colorado.