Doctoral Disssertation Research: Delinquency and Depression: Gendered Reactions to Stress

本论文旨在探讨青少年犯罪与青少年抑郁的形成过程。性别与犯罪的研究一致表明，男性和女性表达越轨行为的方式不同。虽然男性比女性更有可能从事违法行为，但女性比男性更容易患抑郁症。这使得研究人员提出：(1)犯罪和抑郁是一个相似过程的结果，(2)导致这些结果的过程受到性别的影响，导致不同形式的越轨行为——犯罪与抑郁——对男性和女性来说。为了解释这些差异，本研究将利用犯罪学和心理健康研究来探索男性和女性角色的宏观社会变化在定义家庭中持续压力（包括婚姻冲突、角色过载和使用权力-自信纪律）方面发挥重要作用的可能性。这种家庭内部持续的压力反过来又可能影响父母培养适应良好、不离经叛道的青少年的能力。这项研究的一个中心重点将是性别意识形态如何影响这一过程，从而导致长期承受家庭压力的男女青年出现不同形式的越轨行为。在对导致犯罪和抑郁的过程做出解释后，该项目将得出具体的假设，并使用来自全国青年样本的数据对其进行测试。提出的模型将分别估计男性和女性使用LISREL 8协方差结构分析的最大似然程序。这些模型也将使用LISREL的跨组选项同时对男性和女性进行估计。跨人口模型允许评估跨性别因果路径的相对大小。具体而言，跨群体模型允许测试性别与导致犯罪和抑郁的过程之间的相互作用，通过将特定参数限制为跨群体不变。除了研究取得的科学成果外，该奖项还将极大地帮助极有前途的学生完成博士论文的研究。因此，它有助于培养下一代社会科学家。

This Dissertation Improvement research examines the process leading to both juvenile delinquency and adolescent depression among male and female adolescents. Research on gender and delinquency consistently shows that males and females express deviance in different ways. While males are much more likely than females to engage in law-violating behaviors, females are more likely than males to suffer depression. This has led researchers to propose that: (1) delinquency and depression are the outcomes of a similar process, and (2) the process leading to these outcomes is acted upon by gender in ways that result in different forms of deviance - delinquency versus depression - for males and for females. To develop an explanation of these differences, this research will draw on both criminological and mental health research to explore the possibility that macro-level social changes in the roles of men and women play an important part in defining persistent stress - including marital conflict, role overload, and the use of power-assertive discipline - within families. This persistent stress within families, in turn, may influence the ability of parents to raise well-adjusted, nondeviant adolescents. A central focus of this research will be on how gender ideologies influence this process to result in different forms of deviance for male and female youth who are exposed to persistent familial stress. After developing an explanation of the process leading to both delinquency and depression, the project will derive specific hypotheses and test them using data from a national sample of youth. The proposed models will be estimated separately for males and for females using the maximum likelihood procedures for covariance structure analysis in LISREL 8. These models will also be estimated simultaneously for males and females using the cross-groups option of LISREL. Cross-population models allow for the assessment of the relative magnitudes of causal paths across gender. Specifically, cross-population model s allow for tests of interactions between gender and the processes leading to delinquency and depression by constraining particular parameters to be invariant across groups. In addition to the scientific gains to be achieved by the research, this award will materially assist a highly promising student in completing research for the Ph.D. dissertation. Thus it contributes to the thorough training of the next generation of social scientists.