Gender, Adolescent Lifestyles, and Violent Victimization: Implications for Routine Activity Theory

Abstract

Using data from 541 high school students, we examine the associations between structured and unstructured routine activities and adolescent violent victimization in light of gender's influence. In particular, we focused on whether such activity-victimization relationships explained any effect of gender or, in contrast, were perhaps contingent upon gender. The results showed that gender's effect on both minor and serious victimization was substantially mediated by one measured lifestyle, in particular the delinquent lifestyle. In addition, there was only modest evidence of gender moderating the effects of certain lifestyles on victimization; the effects of most activities were consistent across male and female subjects. Implications of our findings for a contemporary age-graded and gendered routine activity theory are discussed.

Keywords:

• adolescent victimization
• lifestyles
• routine activity theory
• gender

Acknowledgments

This research was sponsored, in part, by grant DA-11317 (Richard R. Clayton, PI) from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The authors thank Richard R. Clayton, Graham C. Ousey, and Staci Roberts for their contributions to the TEENS Project, which provides the data analyzed here.

Notes

1. The items “time spent driving around with friends,” “time spent with romantic partner,” and “time spent talking/texting on phone” loaded onto a common factor in the original principal components analysis of all activities, though several of the factor loadings were weak (i.e., below .65). Further, the alpha reliability coefficient associated with those three measures was below conventional levels of acceptability (Cronbach's alpha = .61).

2. Preliminary principal components analysis and reliability analysis revealed that these various structured activities were distinct rather than representing underlying constructs.

3. On the one hand, some of the activities that are involved in an e-lifestyle and unstructured socializing (phone) are often done alone at home, thus seemingly posing minimal exposure to violent victimization. That being said, provocative online and phone/text communications could potentially induce subsequent person-to-person confrontations. In addition, the videogame component of this lifestyle often involves peers playing together at someone's home, with or without parental supervision.

4. Specific items included “My mother seems to understand me,” “My mother makes rules that seem fair to me,” “My mother is concerned with how I am doing in school,” “My mother helps me with my homework,” “My mother talks to me about my report card,” “My mother makes me feel wanted,” “I share my thoughts and feelings with my mother,” “I talk to my mother,” “I do things with my mother,” “My mother knows where I am when I am away from home,” “My mother knows who I am with when I am away from home,” and “My mother sets a time for me to be home at night.”

5. Once cases with missing data were deleted, there were only 15 males and 11 females reporting serious violent victimization.

6. The analyses in which the e-lifestyle index is “unpacked,” and effects of individual items are estimated are not shown in table form here but are available from the corresponding author upon request.