Social Control Theory

Hirschi (1969) described Social Control Theory as the likelihood a juvenile will engage in future delinquent behaviors stems from the social bonds and family ties they are influenced by in everyday life. If a juvenile has poor family ties and social bonds at a young age, they will likely become delinquent as they grow older. While strong family ties and social bonds will deter a juvenile from future delinquent behaviors. Three articles were examined, and all study the aspects of these bonds to help determine if a juvenile will commit delinquent acts in their life time. Although, they all had different levels of measurement, the ultimate dependent variables was delinquency, whether it be serious, non-serious, risky behavior, or non-medical prescription drug use.

Lieber, Mack, and Featherstone (2008) looked at the correlation between juveniles and delinquent acts broken down to serious and non-serious acts. They did a cross-sectional study by pulling data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. The random sampling of 7th through 12th grade students was taken in a survey and also interviews with the mother of the household. Starting off with a total sample of 20,745 students, after they took out the interviews that were not obtained with the biological mother, and were not White, African American, or Hispanic, they ended up with a final sample of 9,636 samples. Which is about a 46% response rate from the initial sample.

The independent variables, to coincide with the dependents of serious and non-serious delinquency, in the study were then broken down and measured in a series of nominal, ordinal, and interval scales to measure the family ties, maternal attachments, and racial differences from the samples to see which increased the likelihood of delinquency. Family structure was a nominal scale looking into if the family was intact (biological mother and father) or non-intact (Divorced, widowed, or never married). Race was setup