The relationship among family environment, criminal thinking, and attitudes toward substance use in delinquent adolescents

ABSTRACT

Objective

This study aimed to investigate the relationship among family environment, criminal thinking, and attitudes toward substance use in delinquent adolescents.

Methods

A descriptive correlational study was conducted. A total of 132 adolescents who arrested for narcotic-related crimes and referred to the Delinquency Rehabilitation Center of Yazd City, Iran, were selected. The data were gathered using the Attitude toward Narcotic Substances questionnaire, the Family Environment Scale, and the Psychological Inventory of Criminal Thinking Styles and were analyzed via the Pearson correlation and multiple regression analysis.

Results

The findings showed that among the dimensions of family conflict, cohesion, and expressiveness in the family environment, only the family conflict dimension had a significant positive correlation with criminal thinking and positive attitudes toward substance use. There was also a meaningful positive relationship between criminal thinking and positive attitudes toward substance use (p < .01). The results of the regression analysis indicated that only criminal thinking was able to predict the adolescents’ positive attitudes toward substance use, while the family environment did not play any significant predictive role (p > .05).

Conclusion

In sum, it was concluded that the crimial thinking patterns in adolescents created in interaction with the peer groups were mainly related to positive attitudes toward substance use rather than the family environment.

KEYWORDS:

• Attitude toward substance use
• family environment
• criminal thinking
• adolescents
• delinquency

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my gratitude to all those who helped me carry out this study, especially the participants.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author contributions

Y R-M participated in study design, gathering theoretical framework, and preparing the manuscript. RA participated in drafting and perspiring the manuscript. AM participated in data collection and data analysis. NG participated in revision of the manuscript and translation of Farsi to English. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Availability of data and materials

Data and materials are confidential, but they will be available upon reasonable request from the corresponding author.

Ethical approval statement

The mothers selected for the research have signed a letter of consent for participation. Ardakan University Research Ethics Committee approved the content of the research and the steps of the work implementation. The ethics certificate code number is ID IR.IAU.KAU.REC.1398.057.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/14659891.2024.2374789.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.