Rural and NonRural African American Youth Does C

Authors: Alexander T Vazsonyi Elizabeth TrejosCastillo Maureen A Young

Publish Date: 2007/11/17

Volume: 37, Issue: 7, Pages: 798-811

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Abstract

The current study provides new information on the etiology of adolescent problem behaviors in African American youth by testing the importance of known predictors namely parenting measures monitoring support and communication peers and neighborhood characteristics across rural and nonrural developmental contexts More specifically the study examined whether rural versus nonrural developmental contexts moderated the relationships between known predictors and a variety of problem behaviors alcohol use drug use delinquency and violence Data were collected from N = 687 rural and N = 182 nonrural African American adolescents mean age = 158 years Findings indicate that both parenting constructs and peer deviance had significant effects on problem behaviors and that these effects were consistent across rural and nonrural developmental contexts The study results are discussed in terms of their implications for ecological frameworks for testing problem behavior etiologyThis research was supported through grants to the first author by USDA National Research Initiative Competitive Grant Program Agreement No 00354019256 and by an award from the Auburn University Competitive Research Grant Program A previous version of the paper was presented at the Annual Meetings of the American Society of Criminology in Los Angeles CA November 1–4 2006

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