A social contagion model of adolescent sexual behavior: explaining race differences

Social Contagion and General Diffusion Models of Adolescent Religious Transitions: A Tutorial, and EMOSA Applications

Epidemic Models of the Onset of Social Activities (EMOSA) describe behaviors that spread through social networks. Two social influence methods are represented, social contagion (one-to-one spread) and general diffusion (spread through cultural channels). Past models explain problem behaviors-smoking, drinking, sexuality, and delinquency. We provide review, and a tutorial (including examples). Following, we present new EMOSA models explaining changes in adolescent and young adult religious participation. We fit the model to 10 years of data from the 1997 U.S. National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Innovations include a three-stage bi-directional model, Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) estimation, graphical innovations, and empirical validation. General diffusion dominated rapid reduction in church attendance during adolescence; both diffusion and social contagion explained church attendance stability in early adulthood.

Exposure to Violence and Posttraumatic Stress Among Youth in Public Housing: Do Community, Family, and Peers Matter?

This study examines the mediating roles of neighborhood risk factors, parental behaviors, and peers on the relationship between community violence exposure and posttraumatic stress in a sample of urban youth in low-income public housing communities. Data are from 320 African-American youth living in public housing in a northeastern city in the USA. Structural equation modeling was utilized to examine the stated relationships. Study results point to significant effects of violence exposure on posttraumatic stress in urban youth. While findings indicated indirect effects of neighborhood risk, parenting practices, and exposure to delinquent peers on posttraumatic stress, each of these paths operates through their relationship with violence exposure, with exposure to delinquent peers having the strongest mediating effect. Exposure to delinquent peers mediates the effects of neighborhood risks and parental behaviors on exposure to community violence, representing one potential intervention point to disrupt the deleterious effects of exposure to violence among youth. Our findings suggest interventions that address peer influence, and group norms may serve as protective factors against the risk of youth violence exposure. Overall, results highlight the co-occurring socioecological context of community violence exposure for youth living in public housing.

Simulated judicial decision-making for African and European American adolescents with illegal sexual behavior: The impact of medical data and victim race/ethnicity

The perceived importance of victim and defendant race/ethnicity and medical evidence in child sexual abuse cases has been recognized separately in the literature. However, few studies have considered these factors simultaneously. Within a sample of 880 college students, an interaction effect was tested between the presence of medical evidence and the race/ethnicity of a juvenile defendant and victim using child sexual abuse case vignettes. The main effects of medical evidence and the race of the defendant were observed. Medical evidence and race of victim influenced victim believability such that medical evidence was more impactful for cases with African American victims. Further, there were interactions between the race of the defendant and the race of the victim in adult versus juvenile court decisions, sex offender registration and notification requirements, and length of sex offender registration and notification. Interracial sexual offending was associated with substantially higher punishment than intraracial sexual offending. Accordingly, several important implications for court-level decision-making processes are explored.

Early pubertal timing and girls' problem behavior: integrating two hypotheses

Girls' early pubertal timing has been linked in many studies to behavioral problems such as delinquency and substance use. The theoretical explanations for these links have often involved the girls' peer relationships, but contexts have also been considered important in some explanations. By integrating two theoretical models, the peer-socialization and the contextual-amplification hypotheses, we propose a contextual framework for explaining the link between early pubertal timing and external problem behavior in girls. We hypothesize that early developing girls engage in unhealthy, dangerous, and risky behavior under contextual conditions that promote access to older friends and opposite-sex relationships. Under other conditions it is less likely. We tested this integrated hypothesis in two studies conducted in Sweden. The first was a cross-sectional study with information about school and free-time friends in a community sample (N = 284). Early pubertal timing was linked to having older, more normbreaking friends outside of school, but not in school, thus suggesting that the school context interferes early-developing girls' selection of older peers. The second study involved both a longitudinal (N = 434) and a cross-sectional sample of girls (N = 634), where we examined a leisure setting that is known to attract delinquent youth. Results showed that early pubertal timing was most strongly linked to delinquency for girls who spent time in this context and were heavily involved with boys and peers. In sum, results from both studies supported our predictions that certain contexts would amplify the peer-socialization effect. Overall, we conclude that the integrated peer-socialization/contextual-amplification model satisfactorily explains the link between pubertal timing and external problem behavior.