Explaining Delinquent Behavior Among Adolescent Girls: Internal Social Control and Differential Association

Questionnaires were completed by ninety girls participating in a therapeutic wilderness program. Indexes were constructed of problems in school, sexual activities, drug and alcohol use, violent acts, major property offenses, minor property offenses, and miscellaneous misdemeanors. Measures of internal social control were of attachment to parents and to school, commitment to educational goals, involvement in homework, beliefs about drug use, and respect for the law. Differential association was measured by questions about friends' behaviors. The combined influence of internal social control as a barrier to deviance and differential association as a push toward deviance was examined. Theories used earlier to explain delinquency among boys generally worked well in identifying the correlates of deviant behavior among these adolescent girls, though results varied for the different types of deviance considered. Implications of results for program development are discussed. Programs intended to address behavior problems among adolescents rest on assumptions about the causes of their behavior. Identifying and empirically testing assumed causes of targeted behavioral problems is an important step in developing and evaluating treatment programs. A variety of existing sociological perspectives claim to explain juvenile delinquency, for example, but relatively little has been published regarding how well these theories might actually work in guiding therapeutic interventions, especially in programs designed to assist female clients. A number of social-psychological theories which have predicted quite well delinquency among teenage boys, particularly the theories of internal social control and differential association, have not been widely used for studies of teenage girls. Meanwhile, the literature pursuing sex role orientation of girls as