| Deviant criminal behavior has been widely studied in the United States and Europe as well as in many Asian countries. However, there has been much less attention to this problem in South American societies. Theories considered the most viable for explaining deviant behavior, whether serious or minor offending, have been developed, mainly, in America, but the question remains, to what extent are they also applicable to other societies.;The main purpose of this study is to determine how well each of four major criminological theories, Social Learning, Strain, Self-Control, and Social Bonding, explains deviant behavior committed in the United States and Bolivia and how they compare to each other in explaining deviant behavior among college students. The research was designed to test the relative explanatory power and cross-cultural generalizability of the four core main criminological theories.;The data for this investigation came from a sample of students in two universities located in two metropolitan areas of Bolivia and a sample of students on one large university located in southeastern United States. Self-reports of law violations and other forms of deviant behavior were obtained from 807 respondents. The research instrument used, in all settings, was a 182-item questionnaire for the American sample and 181-item questionnaire for the Bolivian sample, containing questions regarding alcohol, cigarette, marijuana, cocaine, and other drug use, fighting, stealing, use of fake ID, speeding, and other deviant behaviors, and measures of variables as indicators of explanatory concepts from each of the four theories. For the purposes of this project only five dependent variables are used, alcohol, marijuana, other drugs use, hitting, and beating someone.;The results indicate that social learning theory is supported as an explanation of substance use and violent behavior in both American and Bolivian samples. Mixed support was also found for social bonding, strain, and self-control theories. However, when placed in the same equation with social learning variables, most of the effects of variables from these theories disappear and do not operate as similarly as social learning variables in both societies. There is some evidence of cultural moderation of the social learning process in deviant behavior, but in an unexpected way. (Full text of this dissertation may be available via the University of Florida Libraries web site. Please check http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/etd.html)... |
