Youth-Serving Organizations and Contextual Moderators of Associations with Adolescents' Antisocial Behavior Trajectories.

摘要

The primary goal of this dissertation is to develop and test a conceptual model elucidating the dynamic relationships between neighborhood-based youth-serving institutions, family dynamics, neighborhood collective efficacy, and adolescents' antisocial behavior trajectories. I address this goal from relational developmental systems theories (e.g., Lerner, 2006; Overton, 2015) and bioecological perspectives (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006), and by expanding on Leventhal and Brooks-Gunn's (2000) framework identifying processes through which neighborhood structural features (e.g., poverty) operate. I propose a study that attempts to answer three research questions: (1) Do associations between availability of institutional resources and adolescents' activity participation differ as a function of behavior profile? (2) Does activity participation predict stability or change in adolescents' behavior profile membership? and (3) Is the association between adolescents' activity participation and stability or change in their behavior profile membership moderated by family dynamics or neighborhood collective efficacy? I address these questions using the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, a large, longitudinal dataset with a neighborhood-based sampling framework. Policy and research implications are discussed.