Family, school, peer, and media predictors of adolescent deviant behavior in Hong Kong

Abstract

Based on a self-report study of 1139 secondary school students in Hong Kong, this paper estimates the strengths of selected family variables, school variables, peer variables, and media variables in the prediction of adolescent deviant behavior. Regresssion results show that the equation containing peers' deviant behavior, peers' disapproval of deviant behavior, frequency of media exposure, preference for violent/obscene content, imitation of media characters, parents' deviant behavior, and teachers' negative evaluation explained the greatest amount of variance of adolescent deviant behavior. Theoretical and research implications of these and other findings for the rapidly industrializing and modernizing society of Hong Kong are discussed.