Australian adolescents' explanations of juvenile delinquency

Abstract

Research suggests that lay people invoke a multiplicity of causes to explain crime and juvenile offending. The extent to which the different explanations are endorsed appears to be partly a function of demographic characteristics. Abrams, Simpson, and Hogg (1987) suggested that those who are in psychological proximity to delinquency are more likely to invoke situational type explanations for juvenile offending rather than dispositional ones. This study tests this proximity hypothesis and provides information on Australian adolescents' explanations of juvenile delinquency. A total of 3,171 secondary school pupils from 25 state high schools in New South Wales rated 39 explanations for juvenile offending on a Likert scale. Principal component analysis and a varimax rotation of the responses identified six factors: home environment, emotional adjustment, social control, impulsivity, innate, and social alienation. Analysis of the scores on these factors showed that there was some support for the proximity hypothesis.

South African Adolescents' Explanations for Juvenile Delinquency

“…Four of the seven factors are almost identical to those obtained in an Australian study of adolescents (Tyson & Hubert, 2000). These factors are Home Environment, Emotional Adjustment, Social Control and Social Alienation.…”

The Gender Gap in Support for Capital Punishment: A Test of Attribution Theory

“…Similarly, female causal attributions for other social problems such as poverty have focused on situational causes such prejudice, discrimination, and the failure of private industry to help the poor (Feather 1974). Other research, however, has found that women place less emphasis then men on situational court or legal system inadequacies as a reason for increases in crime (see Flanagan 1987) and has hypothesized that women will be more supportive of dispositional explanations of crime because they are more peripheral to it and lack specific information about criminal behaviors (see, e.g., Abrams, Simpson, and Hogg 1987;Tyson and Hubert 2000).…”

“…A review of gender-based differences in attribution styles across the broader literature revealed that the majority of studies found that women tend to favor situational or environmental explanations of crime causality (Hawkins 1981) or beliefs that antisocial behaviors are spawned by negative factors related to the home environment of the actor (Furnham and Henderson 1983;Reuterman 1978;Tyson and Hubert 2000). On a related note, the importance of family and parental discipline has been identified as a main contributor to crime in public opinion studies historically both in the United States and abroad (see Banks, Maloney, and Willcock 1975;McIntyre 1967).…”

Bulimia Nervosa: Professional and Lay People's Beliefs About the Causes

“…Explanatory models (sometimes referred to as implicit theories) arise from the individual's personal experiences but are primarily mediated by the individual's social and cultural environment. The study of explanatory models has been used to identify how members of the general population understand problem behaviours and psychopathologies such as depression, schizophrenia, juvenile delinquency, suicide, anorexia nervosa, and ADHD (Furnham & Bower, 1992;Furnham & Hume-Wright, 1992;Trice & Bjorck, 2006;Tyson & Hubert, 2000;Voracek, Loibl, & Lester, 2007).…”