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ADOLESCENTS' PERCEPTION OF DEVIANCE: A STUDY OF DELINQUENT AND NONDELINQUENT MEXICAN AMERICAN ADOLESCENTS' PERCEPTIONS OF ALCOHOL-RELATED AND NONALCOHOL-RELATED PEER PROBLEM BEHAVIORS
Abstract
Extant literature indicates a need to investigate Mexican American adolescents' perceptions of peer deviant behaviors. The parameters of deviance perception in adolescent populations remain relatively unexplored. In addition, problems specific to the delivery of mental health services to Mexican Americans necessitate systematic, conceptually-oriented mental health research on specific Mexican American subgroups. This study used the interactionist perspective of deviance to examine Mexican American adolescents' perceptions of alcohol-related and nonalcohol-related peer problem behaviors. Relationships among deviant status and deviance percepts were examined. Implications of these data to models of mental health systems designed for Mexican Americans were discussed. Subjects were sixty-nine delinquent and eighty-seven nondelinquent urban lower-class Mexican American adolescent residents of south Texas. Each subject responded to a self-administered questionnaire that contained eight brief, written descriptions of adolescent problems. Dependent variables included measures of subjects' attitudes toward the actors, causal attributions for, and perceptions of help sources appropriate to the problems. The interactionist perspective was demonstrated to have considerable utility for examining the social construction of deviance by Mexican American adolescents. Specific findings indicate that the nature of the behavior was the prepotent determinant of the adolescents' perceptions. The expressive nature of the behavior (inner-directed vs. environment-directed behaviors) produced major differences on each of six attitudinal measures, three causal attribution measures and three measures related to utilization of help sources. The alcohol-related nature of the behavior significantly influenced subjects' perceptions of the actors' dangerous to self and others, and perceptions of the actors' capacity for self-control. Delinquent status was related to perceptions of problem severity and causal attributions for the problems, but unrelated to attitudes towards the actors. Characteristics of the subjects and actors were secondary to the aforementioned factors as determinants of the adolescents' perceptions of peer problem behaviors.
Subject Area
Psychotherapy
Recommended Citation
EMBRY, JOHN EDGAR, "ADOLESCENTS' PERCEPTION OF DEVIANCE: A STUDY OF DELINQUENT AND NONDELINQUENT MEXICAN AMERICAN ADOLESCENTS' PERCEPTIONS OF ALCOHOL-RELATED AND NONALCOHOL-RELATED PEER PROBLEM BEHAVIORS" (1986). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI8624588.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI8624588