The effect of school discipline on students' social bonds

The criminalization of the school disciple process has led many researchers to question its effectiveness in decreasing delinquency in society. Some researchers have suggested that the exclusion of youths from school may actually have the unintended consequences of causing youth's criminality by removing them from the school. Aside from a youth's peers and family, the school is a crucial social institution to which individuals become enmeshed in adolescence. Youths learn prosocial values and norms in schools, and are oftentimes insulated from delinquent others. The purpose of this research is to explore the indirect effects of school disciple on youths' delinquency by examining their prosocial bonds to the school. The complex nature of this research requires a multi-wave, secondary data source and several analytical techniques, including descriptive statistics, zero-order correlations, and multivariate linear regression. By utilizing data originally collected from the first two waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), these analyses isolate eighth grade students as the population of interest. After controlling for several background variables that are shown by previous research to influence youths' school social bonds and delinquency, the analyses did not find school disciplinary actions or school social bonds to be a significant predictor of delinquency. Despite these null findings, several other variables in the models did predict both school social bonds and delinquency. Ultimately, this methodology seeks to accomplish three things: (1) bridge the gap between social control and school discipline literature (2) contribute to the delinquency research by demonstrating the factors that predict both social bonds to the school and delinquency (3) and inform policymakers about the effects that school discipline has on weakening the social controls of educational institution.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Criminal Justice and Criminology (UMKC)

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Missouri--Kansas City

Year dc:date.issued

2011

Author dc:creator

• Scaggs, Samuel Joseph Alexander

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Holsinger, Alexander M.

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10355/10776

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:mospace.umsystem.edu:10355/10776