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Abstract
The current study incorporated principles from the acculturation literature to specify an ethnically relevant general strain theory (GST). This study argues that the acculturation process exposes Hispanics to unique types of strain (e.g., prejudice and discrimination) that may increase the likelihood of delinquency. Further varying levels of Hispanic concentration can moderate the effect of acculturative strain on delinquency, whereby the effect of ethnic-specific strains may be more pronounced where ethnic concentration is low. Responses from self-administered questionnaires of 1,729 Hispanic adolescents were analyzed to test various hypotheses regarding the effects of traditional and acculturation-related strains on violent delinquency. The findings indicated that GST is generalizable to Hispanic adolescents. The analyses also found support for the prediction that, conditional on the level of Hispanic concentration, ethnic-specific strain measures increased the likelihood of violent delinquency among Hispanic adolescents. This study provided a foundation for future empirical analyses of criminological theories among Hispanic populations.
The authors thank Robert Agnew and Paul Mazerolle for their insightful comments and suggestions on a previous draft of this article. An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, Seattle, Washington.
Notes
1We recognize that coping mechanisms such as those that are used in the analyses presented here have been identified by Agnew (Citation1992) and others as responses to strain; therefore, including coping resources simultaneously in models with the other GST-related processes may limit the potential for finding significance. Nevertheless, we chose to be consistent with prior GST research using stepwise regression models (see Piquero and Sealock Citation2004) and include these measures as control variables in the sense that the effect of strain and anger on violence is estimated while controlling for other possible non-delinquent coping strategies.
Asterisk denotes significant mean differences (p < .05) by Hispanic community concentration.
+ p < .10; ∗p < .05; ∗∗p < .01; ∗∗∗p < .001.
∗p < .05; ∗∗p < .01; ∗∗∗p < .001.