Deviant Peers and Delinquency: The Influence of Classroom Context

Abstract

In recent years, researchers have looked toward distinguishing the routes whereby some daily social contexts influence adolescent development. In considering these contexts, this study identified three hypotheses to illustrate the theoretical assumptions related to the mechanism for adolescents to develop delinquency. The results, essentially, fully supported the theoretical hypotheses. The most important finding of the results is that, for Taiwanese adolescent students, the classroom context did have a crucial influence on their development of conduct problems. In addition, the HLM analyses indicated that individual-level deviant peers is positively associated with adolescent students’ delinquency. Furthermore, we also found that the effect of classroom-level delinquency amplifies the effect of deviant peers on adolescents’ delinquency. These findings offer insight into understanding the importance of classroom contexts for Taiwanese and even for East Asian students in general.