Date of Award

11-28-2019

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Criminal Justice

First Advisor

James Golden

Abstract

This dissertation examined the link between low self-control, risky lifestyles, and victimization, using data from 1,057 South Korean adolescents included in the Study on Childhood Delinquency. Specifically, this study explores a full mediation model to test whether risky lifestyles (unstructured activity, association with deviant peers, and delinquency) account for the effect of low self-control on victimization. The results indicated that low self-control only had an indirect effect on victimization primarily through unstructured time and one’s own delinquency. In addition, this study explored whether variations in the adolescent routine activities foster engagement in delinquency via association with deviant peers. Advancing prior victimization research and expanding a recent study on adolescent offending to victimization, the results found that unstructured activities were positively related to delinquency fully operating through deviant peer affiliations. However, this pattern hold up only for boys, suggesting that the indirect pathways are not uniform across boys and girls. Lastly, gender-specific models were also specified to investigate whether the effects of risky lifestyles on victimization are invariant across gender. The results revealed that time spent in unstructured routines increased the risk of victimization only for girls. In addition, for girls just having delinquent peers was found to be protective factor for victimization unless they do not engage in delinquent behavior. Uncovering these various mechanisms provide more practical policy implications.

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