Lonely or Misled? The Effects of Social Integration on Weapon Carrying among American Adolescents by James Moody The Ohio State University

Lonely or Misled?

The Effects of Social Integration on Weapon Carrying among American Adolescents

by

James MoodyThe Ohio State University

"They set themselves completely apart, they didn't talk to anyone else."

- Melisa Snow, Columbine High School, of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold

"My whole life, I just felt outcasted, alone." - Luke Woodham, Shooter, Perl High School, Mississippi

Introduction

Introduction

• Most media explanations of recent school shootings have focused on psychological or media-influence explanations.

• What else can sociologist add to our understanding of why adolescents bring weapons to school?

- Situate students in a multi-level environment- Treat schools as social systems- Identify the multiple contents of peer culture

• What can weapon carrying tell sociology about adolescent social life?

- Not often studied by delinquency scholars- qualitatively different meanings of weapons used in

different contexts.

Introduction

1. Introduction2. Weapons in American Schools3. Schools as Social Systems - Social Integration - Peer Influence4. Multiple Domains of Adolescent Life - Individual Characteristics - Family - Peers - (School & Community)5. Data and Methods6. Results7. Conclusions & Implications

Weapons in American Schools

0

5

10

15

20

25

1993 1995 1997 1999

Percent of Students who Report Carrying Weapons to School

Total

HispanicWhite

Black

Detail: Males

0

5

10

15

20

25

1993 1995 1997 1999


Percent of Students who Report Carrying Weapons to School

Total

Hispanic

White

Black

Detail: Females


•Surveys show high variability in weapon prevalence across settings•YRBSS is limited in this regard, with too few points in most settings•Wary students are more likely to under-report to government agencies

•Surveys conducted in local areas suggest wider variance •Range as high as 50% in some setting, BUT:

•Often target high-risk settings•Widely varying question, sampling and survey methodologies•Difficult to draw uniform conclusions from these data

•Add Health provides national coverage with consistent survey methodology

•National Sample•CADI design for highest confidentiality

Schools as Social Systems


Why should the structure of the relational system matter?

•Two insights from J.S. Coleman- The Adolescent Society

Normative patterns follow relations- The Production of Social Capital

Closed social structures generate social control

•Social Disorganization Literature- disconnected communities

1) cannot effectively monitor minors2) provide weaker normative socialization

•Both resting on basic insights from Durkheim’s work on solidarity

Social Integration

Schools as Social Systems Coleman’s Adolescent Society

One of the earliest works to treat schools as lives social communities, focusing on the relational structure of the school.

Social Integration


Coleman’s Adolescent Society: Integration matters.Social Integration


Social Disorganization

• Work on communities & crime stresses the ability of the community to effectively monitor & socialize youth.

•Neighborhoods characterized by high mobility, many single-parent families, high rates of renter-occupied housing all lack the kind of social closure needed for effective social control.

•Theory rests on network connections, data rests on proxy indicators

Social Integration


How do we identify structural cohesion?

The structural essence of social solidarity lies in the relational redundancy of the network.

• Coleman’s social closure distinguishes an easily disrupted pattern from one where information flows in multiple directions

• The problem with mobility and broken families rests on the inability of social resources to flow through the community networks

• Integrated networks admit to many paths connecting people through many alters

Social Integration


Coleman’s Social Capital & The Generation of Human CapitalSocial Integration


•Networks are structurally cohesive if they remain connected even when nodes are removed

Removal of any point in this network disconnects the set.

Each person can control the flow of information through the group.

Social Integration



If there are multiple ways goods can flow, the group does not depend on a single individual to carry information

Social Integration



Node Connectivity

0 1 2 3

Social Integration

Schools as Social SystemsSocial Integration

•The majority of research on adolescents and peers•Differential Association & Social Learning Theory•Social Influence models (Friedkin et al)

[expand these points]

Schools as Social SystemsPeer Influence


•Direct imitation vs. normative context•Self-reports vs. peer reports•Selection vs. influence

Limitations & Extensions


SLT & Internal Mechanisms•SLT focuses on the why of differential association•I want to focus on the content, as such, I largely assume a normative information mechanism.

Adolescent Social ContextsIndividual Level

Motivation

•FearAfraid at schoolWitness violence

•PowerlessnessFuture orientationSelf-ConfidenceSelf Control

•AlienationNot Liked by othersLonelyAttachment to School


Opportunity

•OpportunityAutonomyTime hanging out with friends


Normative Acceptability

•Social ControlDelinquencySchool OrientationReligiosity

•Culture & BackgroundMedia ExposureGenderRace

Adolescent Social ContextsFamily Context

Opportunity

•Family MonitoringFamily StructureFamily SESParent assessment of friends

•AccessGun in the home

Adolescent Social ContextsFamily Context


•Cultural BackgroundGun in HomeFamily SES

•AttachmentClose to ParentsParents Care

•Social IntegrationOutsider PositionOut-of-school nominations

Adolescent Social ContextsPeer Context

Motivation

Adolescent Social ContextsPeer Context


Differential AssociationPeer DelinquencySchool orientation of peers

Adolescent Social ContextsSchool & Community

Motive, Opportunity & Normative Climate

Schools & Communities can affect each weapon carrying dimension. For example,

•Violent schools may generate more fear

•Racial tension might promote weapon carrying•Large schools may be more alienating and less capable of monitoring students•Geographically dispersed schools may have weaker social integration •etc.

Specifying & testing for such factors is beyond the scope of the present work. However, school effects must be controlled if we are to have any faith in the within school models. I do this using school-level fixed effects for each model.

The National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health*

* a program project designed by J. Richard Udry and Peter S. Bearman, and funded by a grant HD31921 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to the Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with cooperative funding participation by the following agencies: The National Cancer Institute; The National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism; the National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders; the National Institute on Drug Abuse; the National Institute of General Medical Sciences; the National Institute of Mental Health; the Office of AIDS Research, NIH; the Office of Director, NIH; The National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, HHS; Office of Minority Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, HHS, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, HHS; and the National Science Foundation.

Data & Methods: Sample summary

The National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health

Alternate Schools

1994 - 1994In-school

Questionnairen = 90,118

1995 Wave 1In - Home

QuestionnaireN = 20,745

1996 Wave 2In - Home

QuestionnaireN = 14,738 1994 School

AdministratorQuestionnaire

N = 164


The National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health

•I use network data from the In-school survey (1994/5) and behavior measures from the in-home survey (1995).

•113 schools have usable global network data & weights, reducing the sample universe to 13,466


I estimate survey corrected logistic regression models with fixed effect parameters for each school.

Who Carries Weapons to Schools?

Prevalence

•16% of males and 5% of females report carrying a weapon to school•This proportion varies somewhat across schools:

Who Carries Weapons to Schools?

PrevalencePercent

0

5

10

15

20

25

Outsiders(8%)

Bridges(25%)

Members(67%)

Males

Females

-0.04

-0.02

0

0.02

0.04

0.06

0.08

Safe Seen Violence

Self Confidence

Not Liked

Loneliness SchoolAttachment

Self Control

Ch

ang

e i

n p

(Y=

1|X

)Who Carries Weapons to Schools?Model Results: Individual Motivational Factors

Change in an average adolescent’s probability of weapon carrying for a one standard deviation increase in X*

College Expectation

* Based on model 6 of table 5

Who Carries Weapons to Schools?Model Results: Individual Opportunity & Acceptability Factors



-0.02

0

0.02

0.04

0.06

Own Decisions

Hang w. Friends

Smoker Drinker GPA Religiosity Media

Ch

ang

e i

n p

(Y=

1|X

)

Probability of Carrying a Weapon by Race and Gender*

0

0.05

0.1

0.15

0.2

0.25

0.3

White Black Hispanic Asian Native American Other

Race/Ethnicity

Pro

bab

ility

of

carr

yin

g a

wea

po

n

Males

Females

Who Carries Weapons to Schools?Model Results: Individual Acceptability Factors


Who Carries Weapons to Schools?Model Results: Family Opportunity & Acceptability factors



-0.02

0

0.02

0.04

0.06

Step family

SingleMother

Single Father

Other Family

Gun in home

Close to Parents

Parents Care

Parents Friend

Ch

ang

e i

n p

(Y=

1|X

)

Network Effects on Weapon Carrying

0

0.04

0.08

0.12

0.16

0.2

0.080

0.191

0.32

0.413

0.524

0.635

0.746

0.857

Peer Context

Peer Group Deviance

School Oriented Peer Group

Social Outsiders

Who Carries Weapons to Schools?Model Results: Peer Effects

Documents

Lonely or Misled? The Effects of Social Integration on Weapon Carrying among American Adolescents by James Moody The Ohio State University