Family influences on adolescent delinquent behaviors: Applying the social development model to a Chinese sample

A theoretical Social Development Model of Chinese adolescent delinquency was tested in the current study. Questionnaire survey data were collected from 736 Chinese 7th and 9th graders, their parents, and their teachers from 2 middle schools in Beijing, China. The hypothesized model was tested separately for boys and girl with Structural Equation Modeling and adequate goodness of fit indices were reported for both models. The analyses revealed that the hypothesized model did not apply equally for boys and girls in the current study. More specifically, the following mediation processes were identified for both boys and girls: (1) adolescent involvement in conventional activities mediated the relation between family conventional opportunities and adolescent perceived parental rewards; and (2) parental rewards in turn mediated the relation of adolescent involvement in conventional activities to parent-adolescent attachment. For girls only, parental rewards mediated the relationship between parental monitoring and parent-adolescent attachment, and parent-adolescent attachment was related to parent and adolescent report outcomes through the mediation effect of adolescent deviant beliefs. The relationships between adolescent involvement and parental rewards, between parental rewards and attachment, and between adolescent deviant beliefs and adolescent report delinquent behaviors were stronger for boys than for girls. Lastly, the hypothesized moderation effects of adolescent social skills and parental deviant beliefs on the specified paths were not supported in this study. Findings from this study had significant implications for future research and prevention work with this population.