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ABSTRACT
We examine the long-term effect of school environment on individual deviant behavior. Specifically, we contrast the effects of school deviance and students’ perception of school deviance on personal deviance later in life. Using longitudinal data from four waves of more than 3,100 participants in the Kaplan Longitudinal and Multigenerational Study, we are able to show that school deviance in 7th grade has only a short-term effect on individual deviance. However, when students perceive a lack of deviance in their school at 7th grade, it decreased their personal deviance in their mid-forties if they were both deviant in 7th grade and reported an external locus of control.
Acknowledgment
The authors gratefully acknowledge the Howard B. Kaplan Laboratory for Social Science Research in the Department of Sociology at Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas for providing access to KLAMS data.
Funding
The data were collected by Dr. Howard B. Kaplan over a large part of the course of his career, supported in part by grants to him from the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA DA00105, DA00136, DA02497, and DA04310). The data analysis for this article was partially supported by Humanities and Social Science Enhancement of Research Capacity (HASS ERC) Grant Award 2013–2014 at Texas A&M University.
Notes
1 The total number of students in the original target sample is 9,335. The number at wave 7 (time 4 of this study) is 5,449 which is approximately 58% of the original target sample.
2 The survey at wave 4 (23–31 years of age) includes questions about deviance, but these questions are targeted towards much more serious forms of deviance or measure some duration of the behavior (e.g., wave 4 survey asks whether the respondent carried a razor, switchblade or a knife as a weapon every day or nearly every day for at least a month; while the same question in other waves asks whether the respondent ever carried a razor, switchblade or a knife during the last month). The sample for the survey at wave 5 (age 30–34) is a targeted sample of people at risk of HIV and is therefore not appropriate for this study, and the Time 6 data collection only includes a blood sample of respondents (no interview was conducted at wave 6).
3 We will be referring to the original data wave 7 as time 4 in the rest of the article (since the article uses four different time-points, not seven).
4 Based on bivariate analysis, those who were not interviewed in adulthood are more deviant in adolescence and perceive their school as slightly more deviant (mean level difference of .05) than those who were interviewed both in adolescence and at adulthood. They have also slightly more external locus of control. There are no differences in aggregated deviance for those who were interviewed in adolescence only or those interviewed in both adolescence and young adulthood. Males are more likely than females to not continue on to adulthood with the survey. Those with no religion are more likely than those with religion to drop out from the survey before adulthood. The parental education is slightly higher (the mean level difference of .11) for those interviewed throughout than those who were interviewed only in adolescence. There are no race differences between those interviewed in adolescence only and those interviewed both in adolescence and in young adulthood.
5 The combination of low count of valid cases and low percent ever participated made it impossible to calculate the covariance matrixes needed for Polychoric Principal Component analysis.
6 While it is ideal to include as many schools as possible, it is common to see fewer than 50 schools used in the educational literature (e.g., Battistich and Hom Citation1997; Koth et al. Citation2008).
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Heili Pals
HEILI PALS is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Texas A&M University. Her current research focuses on the social psychology of the life course, the social psychological explanations behind the development of deviance, and inequality due to sexual orientation. She works in collaboration with the Howard B. Kaplan Laboratory for Social Science Research and is an associate editor of the journal Population Review. She has published in journals such as Social Psychology Quarterly, American Journal of Criminal Justice, and Journal of Adolescence.
Tony P. Love
TONY P. LOVE is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Kentucky. His areas of interest include crime, deviance, social psychology, and research methodology. He has published in these areas in journals such as the American Sociological Review, Sociological Methodology, and Violence Against Women. His current research includes a mixed methods analysis of the 2014 iCloud hacking and subsequent release of celebrity nude photos, an examination of Twitter reaction to the Ray Rice/NFL domestic violence controversy, and an experimental evaluation of the effects of status on identity stability and change.
Bryce Hannibal
BRYCE HANNIBAL is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Institute for Science, Technology, and Public Policy in the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. His research interests include complex organizations and organizational deviance, social networks, and environmental sociology.
Warren Waren
WARREN WAREN is an Instructional Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University. His broad research interests include race, culture, and social demography. His demographic research has been published in Urban Studies and the Journal of International Migration and Integration, the Journal of Population Research, as well as Population, Space, and Place.