PURPOSE: The aim of this study was to develop and evaluate a structural model including relevant factors to identity the variables that affect school adjustment in juvenile delinquents. On the basis of a review of the literature on school adjustment of juvenile delinquents and on Bronfenbrenner's bio-ecological model, a hypothetical model was developed by setting home environmental factors (e.g.,economic conditions, parent child communication, parenting attitudes, peer relationships, and academic stress) as exogenous variables, and personal factors (e.g., ego identity and psychological well-being) as endogenous variables. METHODS: Data were collected from January 29 to March 3, 2015 by a survey of 206 students attending junior high and high schools in City B. The collected data were analyzed using the SPSS and Amos 22.0 software. RESULTS: The verification of the hypothetical model indicated a good fit for the model: χ²=0.009 df=13, χ²/df=2.161, GFI=0.97, AGFI=0.90, RMESA=0.07, CFI=0.98, TLI=0.95, and RMR=0.01. CONCLUSION: The results suggest that ego identity and parent-child communication do not directly affect school adjustment of juvenile delinquents but influence it depending on the psychological well-being of delinquents. High levels of psychological well-being, better economic conditions, better parent-child communication, and low academic stress were abserved to contribute to better school life. Therefore, to improve the school adjustment of juvenile delinquents, appropriate measures need to be taken and programs need to be designed for improving ego identity and parent-child communication, thus promoting psychological well-being.
Child ; Ego ; Humans ; Juvenile Delinquency ; Models, Structural ; Parenting ; Parents

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to identify the effects of a value clarification program on value clarification in juvenile delinquents. This study employed a two-group pre-post test study design. Data was collected from 16 subjects from Sept. 29 to Dec. 26, 2003 at N middle school in Seoul, Korea. 9 subjects constituted the control, while the experimental group was composed of 7 subjects. METHOD: The structured group therapy used in this study was developed on the basis of Raths et al. (1978) theory. The subjects participated in 10 sessions of therapy that lasted 60 minutes. The instruments used were value clarification Test (Lee, 1988), and SPSS Window. RESULT: The experimental group showed a significant increase in value clarification after their participation in the program. CONCLUSION: Based upon the findings it was concluded that a value clarification program was effective in improving value clarification in juvenile delinquents in the study.
*Social Values ; *Psychotherapy, Group ; Male ; Juvenile Delinquency/*rehabilitation ; Humans ; Adolescent

PURPOSE: Recently the number of juvenile delinquents have been increasing in Korea and their misdeeds were getting worse. This study was conducted to find out the basic cause of juvenile delinquency and a counterplan of overcoming this distress. METHODS: The authors reviewed the statistics of the Supreme Public Prosecutors Office to know the juvenile delinquents and Korean national statistics to know the changes of family environments. The author conducted a study on the family environments between student group and juvenile de linquent group in jail, and also investigated the value judgement of middle and high school students to know the difference between the recent adolescents and the youth before 1945. RESULTS: Nuclear families, dual-income families and divorce rates have remarkably been increased recently. All of which are considered to be the basic cause of getting worse in home teaching. It was found that the delinquent group have more defective families, poorer economic status, poorer parent's educational level than the student group, and also found that the value judgement of recent youth were quite different from that of youth before 1945. CONCLUSION: Industrialization have changed our home-environment rapidly which made home-teaching poorer, and the children were being insecure and melancholy, which consequently made them more abnormal youth and juvenile delinquents in Korea.
Adolescent ; Child ; Divorce ; Humans ; Juvenile Delinquency ; Korea* ; Nuclear Family

The purpose of this study was to test the theoretical model designed to explain juvenile delinquency by media violence. Data were collected through questionnaire survey over a period of 3 months. Subjects served for this study consisted of 537 adolescents including 217 delinquent adolescents and 320 student adolescents in Korea, sampled from Korean student population and delinquent adolescent population confined in juvenile correctional institutions, using proportional stratified random sampling method. In this study, exogeneous variable was family dynamic environment and endogeneous variables were character of adolescent including need satisfaction/ frustration, sociability, antisocial personality tendency, complaints of psychosomatic symptoms and depressive trend, juvenile delinquent behavior and media violence themes including the extent of interest in and exposure and modelling impulsiveness and modelling to media violence themes. A total of 18 instruments were used to operationalized concepts in this model. A validation study indicated that internal consistencies for the 18 instruments which the researcher used were reliable. The one month test-retest correlation for these instruments ranged from 0.54 to 0.88. Statistical methods employed were descriptive statistics and covariance structural modelling. In summarized conclusion, it was found that media violence served as the most contributor to juvenile delinquency by direct effect of 0.64(t=10.18). That is, as the adolescents have to be the higher extent of interest in and exposure and modelling impulsiveness and modelling to media violence themes, they will show the more frequency of delinquent behavior. The single most powerful contributor by total effect of 0.73(t=7.90) (direct effect=0.19, indirect effect=0.54) to the development of delinquent behavior identified in this study was a construct defining family dynamic environment. That is, as the adolescents had to be more unstable family dynamic environment, they became more frustrated to their psychological need, and revealed the more maladaptive personality pattern, consequently they behaved the higher misconducts such as juvenile delinquency through media violence.
Adolescent ; Antisocial Personality Disorder ; Frustration ; Humans ; Juvenile Delinquency ; Korea ; Models, Structural* ; Models, Theoretical ; Surveys and Questionnaires ; Violence*

This study was conducted to find out an appropriate means for preventing the juvenile delinquency (JD), which is supposed to be greatly realted to family environment. The data were collected through a questionnaire survey with a means of writing by themself, to 257 middle and high school students and 309 juvenile delinquents who were in confinement. The questionnaire was consisted of 27 items of juvenile delinquencies, 15 questions about personal environment in their period of childhood, 36 questions on their home atmosphere, 25 items with regard to their parental behavior to their children in the rearing of them. The extent of delinquency was calculated by summing the numbers of experienced delinquencies of the listed items. The study subjects were divided into two groups; student group (SG) and juvenile delinquent group (JDG) and the collected data were analyzed with the extent of delinquency in each group by SPSS/PC+statistical package. The extent of JD was increased as the study subjects grew older, defective families were more common, total family income was more poor, parents' educational level was lower, personal expenses were higher and the conflicts between parents were more high in JDG as compared with of SG. The differences were statistically significant. As long as the extent of delinquency is concerned, delimquent points of JDG were significantly higher as compared with that of SG in all items except one item, below the primary school item in fathers' educational level. (In order to prevent JD in our country, it is recommended that educational level and the living standared of the lower class people should be raised, the sound families which do have less conflictsshould be established as much as possible, the present educational system which is making much conflicts between parents and their offsprings should be changed so that their given temperament would be brought up to the highest level, defective families should be reduced as much as possible and adults should not do actions that are considered not to be done by youngsters and must set a good example.)
Adult ; Atmosphere ; Child ; Humans ; Juvenile Delinquency* ; Parents ; Surveys and Questionnaires ; Temperament ; Writing

OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study is to investigate the characteristics of the temperament and character of juvenile delinquents, and to explore the effect of those factors on juvenile delinquent behavior. METHODS: 128 male and 29 female juvenile delinquents on probation, and 66 male and 69 female students in the 10th and the 11th grade, completed Junior Temperament and Character Inventory (JTCI), anxiety, depression scales and Latent Delinquency Questionnaire. RESULTS: Male juvenile delinquents showed significantly higher 'novelty seeking', and lower 'harm avoidance' and 'persistence' in JTCI subscales, compared to normal control group. Stepwise multiple-regression analysis showed that 'novelty seeking' and 'harm avoidance' were significantly predicting juvenile delinquent behavior. In the case of the female adolescents, delinquent group was significantly lower 'harm avoidance' than normal groups, and stepwise multiple regression analysis showed 'self-transcendence' was the only significant predicting variable for juvenile delinquent behavior. CONCLUSION: Based on the results, temperament was related to the juvenile delinquent behavior especially for male delinquent adolescents.
Adolescent ; Anxiety ; Depression ; Female ; Humans ; Juvenile Delinquency ; Male ; Surveys and Questionnaires ; Temperament* ; Weights and Measures

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to determine the important factors on juvenile delinquency and to examine relationships between sex, age, the family environment, the personality of adolescents, smoking, and juvenile delinquency. Methods: Data collection was done through questionnaire surveys. The subjects for this study consisted of 1,948 adolescents delinquents : 784, students : 1,164 in Korea, using proportional stratified random sampling method. Statistical methods employed were chi-square, t-test and path analysis. Results: The results of this study were as follows : 1. The delinquent adolescents were reared in a more dysfunctional family environment, and had a higher maladaptive personality than the other student adolescents. 2. The delinquent adolescents showed the larger amount of smoking than the student adolescents. The cause of increased smoking tendency among delinquents simply were 'for social relation', 'for diversion', 'for nicotine addiction', whereas 'for tension relieving' among non-delinquent adolescents. 3. The most powerful contributors on delinquent behavior were antisocial personality tendencies, smoking, sex, strength of parent- child relationships, and the age of the adolescents in this order. Conclusions: Our cross-sectional findings indicate that smoking was one of the most powerful contributing variables to delinquent behavior, but family environment, personality, sex and age of adolescents were also proved to be strong exogenous variables to smoking in adolescents.
Adolescent* ; Antisocial Personality Disorder ; Child ; Data Collection ; Humans ; Juvenile Delinquency ; Korea ; Nicotine ; Surveys and Questionnaires ; Smoke* ; Smoking*

OBJECTIVETo study the major social-psychological factors contributing to male juvenile delinquency.

METHODSOne hundred and thirty-seven cases of male juvenile delinquents (delinquent group) and 145 aged-matched male students (control group) were enrolled in this case-control study. A questionnaire survey was conducted using the Adolescent Self-Rating Life Events Check List, the Coping Style Questionnaire, the Family Environment Scale-Chinese version, and the Social Support Rating Scale.

RESULTSThe monovariate analysis showed that the total score and the scores of some factors of negative life events, the scores of immature coping styles and family conflicts, and the proportion of broken families in the delinquent group were significantly higher than those in the control group. In contrast, the scores of educational levels, study stress factor in the negative life events, mature coping styles, family environments and social supports were significantly lower in the delinquent group than those in the control group. The multivariate factors analysis showed that 7 variables were enrolled into the discriminatory equations, including negative life events (interpersonal relationship and healthy adaptation), self-condemn styles, family conflicts, subjective supports, objective supports, and utilization of social supports. The total accuracy of this equation was 92.2%.

CONCLUSIONSNegative life events in the interpersonal relationship and healthy adaptation, self-condemn styles, family conflicts, and weak social support system may be major social-psychological factors contributing to male juvenile delinquency.

Adolescent ; Adult ; Case-Control Studies ; Family ; Humans ; Juvenile Delinquency ; Male ; Multivariate Analysis ; Risk Factors ; Social Support

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to test theoretical model and to build up of final modified model for explaining juvenile delinquency by media violence. METHOD: Data were collected through questionnaire survey over a period of 2 months. The subjects served for this study consisted of 1,943 adolescents including 707 delinquent adolescents and 1,236 student adolescents in Korea, sampled from Korean student population and delinquent adolescent population in juvenile correctional institions, using proportional stratified random sampling method. But, only 537 respondents including 217 delinquent adolescents and 320 student adolescents among 1,943 that replied perfectly to questionnaires were employed for this study. In this study, exogeneous variable was family dynamic environment, and endogeneous variables were character of adolescents including need satisfaction/frustration, sociability, antisocial personality tendency, complaints of psychosomatic symptoms and depressive trend, juvenile delinquent behavior and media violence themes including the extent of interest in and exposure and modelling impulsiveness and modelling to media violence themes. A total of 18 instruments were used to operationalized concepts in this model. Statistical method employed was covariance structural modelling. RESULTS: For build up of the best fit model, the authors proceed by saturating the model, that is, including an arrow for all the possible relationships among all the variables. Afterward, a progressive elimination of the nonsignificant relationships, based on the betas that did not show a p<0.05 levels, was performed, this level was chosen for reasons of parsimony since the size of sample implied many statistically significance. The results of this analysis were as follows : In order to investigate the fitness of theoretical model to our data, Chi-square and goodness of fit index were identified. These results of chi-square value and fitness index score did not to be fit to the theoretical model which hypothesized the causal effect among various variables established in this study. Therefore the authors removed the endogeneous variable, sociability among character of adolescent because of being not significantly influenced on delinquent behavior for constructing the best fit model. The parsimonious best fit model included the various constructs defining family dynamic environment, need frustration, antisocial personality pattern, complaints of psychosomatic symptoms, depressive trend and media violence themes as direct paths to delinquent behavior. This final modified model yielded a very definitely improved goodness of fit indices. According to final modified model, it was revealed that the effects of media violence, complaints of psychosomatic symptoms, antisocial personality tendency on juvenile delinquency were significant positively higher. Especially, the most exerting influential variable on delinquent behavior in this model was media violence themes. The family dynamic environment also, as direct and/or indirect paths, was assumed a positive influence on juvenile delinquency as well as media violence themes. CONCLUSIONS: In brief, it was found that media violence served as the most direct contributor to juvenile delinquency. That is, as the adolescents had the higher extent of interest in and exposure and modelling impulsiveness and modelling to media violence themes, they showed the more frequency of delinquent behavior. The single most powerful contributor by total effect to the development of delinquent behavior identified in this study was the family dynamic environment. That is, as the adolescents had the more unstable family dynamic environment, they became the more frustrated to their psychological need, and revealed the more maladaptive personality pattern, consequently they behaved the higher misconducts such as juvenile delinquency through media violence.
Adolescent ; Antisocial Personality Disorder ; Surveys and Questionnaires ; Depression ; Frustration ; Humans ; Juvenile Delinquency ; Korea* ; Models, Structural* ; Models, Theoretical ; Violence*

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to explore gender-role identity and cyber delinquency in high school students. METHODS: Data were collected through self-administered questionnaires and analyzed by descriptive statistics, t-test, and ANOVA. The data survey was conducted with 1,208 conveniently selected high school students in Seoul, Gyung-gi and Chung-chung province. RESULTS: The cyber delinquency score was 38.94 and androgyny gender role identity was most common (34.0%). There were significant differences in cyber delinquency by academic year, gender, school record, economic status, educational background of parents, experiences of smoking, drinking, runaway, and gender-role identity. According to gender-role identity, the masculinity group showed highest cyber delinquency and the undifferentiated, androgyny, and femininity groups followed respectively. CONCLUSION: These findings are expected to make a contribution to creation of ideal interventions and to help discover early stage cyber delinquency in high school students as approached by gender role identity.
Adolescent ; Child ; Drinking ; Educational Status ; Femininity ; Gender Identity ; Homeless Youth ; Humans ; Juvenile Delinquency ; Masculinity ; Parents ; Surveys and Questionnaires ; Seoul ; Smoke ; Smoking