This study seeks to extend the body of knowledge concerning influences on delinquency by using parent versus child perspectives in examining gender differences in how disrupted family processes influence adolescent behavioral health and substance use. Although several research studies have shown that adolescent delinquency is different for males than for females, few have looked into the possible influence of family processes on this phenomenon and even fewer have studied family processes with data from both youth and parent perspectives.
The study extends the findings of a 2008 study published in the Journal of Youth Adolescence by Gavazzi, Lim, Yarcheck, Bostic, & Scheer by analyzing data collected using the same assessment instrument. Although the GRAD assessment tool can collect data from multiple vantage points, the Gavazzi et al. (2008) study only utilized the youth perspective. This study responds to this limitation by employing both the parent and child perspectives. With the Gavazzi et al. (2008) study in mind, the main hypothesis tested in this study was that perspective matters when examining family factors that impact mental health (i.e., internalizing problems and externalizing problems) and substance use in adolescent, court-involved populations. The hypothesis that perspective matters was upheld. There was a significant difference in the scores of adults and youth regarding all three behavioral health indicators with parents consistently reporting fewer problems.
The second hypothesis that disrupted family processes from the adolescent perspective would be a stronger indicator of mental health and substance abuse among court-involved youth than disrupted family processes from the parent perspective was not upheld. The parent and youth perspectives tested separately provided similar model fits overall. The full dyadic model produced the best model fit for the total sample of all models tested. In the dyadic model and individual models with each perspective predicting their own outcome responses, disrupted family process significantly predicted all three outcomes. Further, there was a significant increase in explained variance when the adult perspective on disrupted family processes was added to the youth perspective.
The last hypothesis was that the association of disrupted family processes to behavioral health risk would be stronger for females than for males. This hypothesis was not upheld. Instead, the multiple group analysis results indicated that the paths for male and female court-involved youth from disrupted family processes to internalizing and substance abuse were equivalent while the strength of the relationship between disrupted family processes and externalizing behaviors was higher for males.
Just as in the current study, the Gavazzi et al. (2008) study found that disrupted family processes were significantly associated with higher levels of behavioral health problems in both genders. It also found that disrupted family processes were operating differently related to internalizing and substance abuse problems in females (Gavazzi et al., 2008). Although these findings are different, they are complementary. Together these studies provide compelling evidence that disrupted family processes may influence behavioral health outcomes differently by gender, and underscore the importance of gathering both the youth and parent perspectives when conducting assessments.