Download The Effects of Social Integration on Weapon

Lonely or Misled?
The Effects of Social Integration on Weapon Carrying
among American Adolescents
by
James Moody
The Ohio State University
Introduction
"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
• 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. Introduction
2. Weapons in American Schools
3. Schools as Social Systems
- Social Integration
- Peer Influence
4. Multiple Domains of Adolescent Life
- Individual Characteristics
- Family
- Peers
- (School & Community)
5. Data and Methods
6. Results
7. Conclusions & Implications
Weapons in American Schools
Percent of Students who Report Carrying Weapons to School
25
Detail: Males
20
15
Hispanic
White
10
Total
Black
5
0
1993
1995
1997
1999
Weapons in American Schools
Percent of Students who Report Carrying Weapons to School
25
Detail: Females
20
15
10
Total
Black
Hispanic
5
White
0
1993
1995
1997
1999
Weapons in American Schools
•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
Schools as Social Systems
Social Integration
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 minors
2) provide weaker normative socialization
•Both resting on basic insights from Durkheim’s work on
solidarity
Schools as Social Systems
Social Integration
One of the earliest works to treat
schools as lives social
communities, focusing on the
relational structure of the school.
Coleman’s Adolescent Society
Schools as Social Systems
Social Integration
Coleman’s Adolescent Society: Integration matters.
Schools as Social Systems
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 singleparent 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
Schools as Social Systems
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
Schools as Social Systems
Social Integration
Coleman’s Social Capital & The Generation of Human Capital
Schools as Social Systems
Social 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.
Schools as Social Systems
Social Integration
•Networks are structurally cohesive if they remain connected
even when nodes are removed
If there are multiple ways goods can
flow, the group does not depend on a
single individual to carry information
Schools as Social Systems
Social Integration
•Networks are structurally cohesive if they remain connected
even when nodes are removed
0
2
1
Node Connectivity
3
Schools as Social Systems
Social Integration
Schools as Social Systems
Peer Influence
•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 Systems
Peer Influence
Limitations & Extensions
•Direct imitation vs. normative context
•Self-reports vs. peer reports
•Selection vs. influence
Schools as Social Systems
Peer Influence
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 Contexts
Individual Level
Motivation
•Fear
Afraid at school
Witness violence
•Powerlessness
Future orientation
Self-Confidence
Self Control
•Alienation
Not Liked by others
Lonely
Attachment to School
Adolescent Social Contexts
Individual Level
Opportunity
•Opportunity
Autonomy
Time hanging out with friends
Adolescent Social Contexts
Individual Level
Normative Acceptability
•Social Control
Delinquency
School Orientation
Religiosity
•Culture & Background
Media Exposure
Gender
Race
Adolescent Social Contexts
Family Context
Opportunity
•Family Monitoring
Family Structure
Family SES
Parent assessment of friends
•Access
Gun in the home
Adolescent Social Contexts
Family Context
Normative Acceptability
•Cultural Background
Gun in Home
Family SES
•Attachment
Close to Parents
Parents Care
Adolescent Social Contexts
Peer Context
Motivation
•Social Integration
Outsider Position
Out-of-school nominations
Adolescent Social Contexts
Peer Context
Normative Acceptability
Differential Association
Peer Delinquency
School orientation of peers
Adolescent Social Contexts
School & 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*
Data & Methods: Sample summary
* 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.
The National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health
Data & Methods: Sample summary
1994 - 1994
In-school
Questionnaire
n = 90,118
1995 Wave 1
In - Home
Questionnaire
N = 20,745
Alternate
Schools
1996 Wave 2
In - Home
Questionnaire
N = 14,738
1994 School
Administrator
Questionnaire
N = 164
The National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health
Data & Methods: Sample summary
•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?
Prevalence
25
Percent
20
15
Males
Females
10
5
0
Outsiders
Bridges
(8%)
(25%)
Members
(67%)
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*
0.08
Change in p(Y=1|X)
0.06
0.04
0.02
0
-0.02
-0.04
Safe
* Based on model 6 of table 5
Seen
College
Self
Violence Expectation Confidence
Not
Liked
Loneliness
School
Self
Attachment Control
Who Carries Weapons to Schools?
Model Results: Individual Opportunity & Acceptability Factors
Change in an average adolescent’s probability of weapon
carrying for a one standard deviation increase in X*
Change in p(Y=1|X)
0.06
0.04
0.02
0
-0.02
Own
Decisions
* Based on model 6 of table 5
Hang w.
Friends
Smoker
Drinker
GPA
Religiosity
Media
Who Carries Weapons to Schools?
Model Results: Individual Acceptability Factors
Probability of Carrying a Weapon by Race and Gender*
0.3
Probability of carrying a weapon
0.25
0.2
Males
0.15
Females
0.1
0.05
0
White
Black
Hispanic
Asian
Race/Ethnicity
* Based on model 6 of table 5
Native American
Other
Who Carries Weapons to Schools?
Model Results: Family Opportunity & Acceptability factors
Change in an average adolescent’s probability of weapon
carrying for a one standard deviation increase in X*
Change in p(Y=1|X)
0.06
0.04
0.02
0
-0.02
Step
family
* Based on model 6 of table 5
Single
Mother
Single
Father
Other
Family
Gun in
home
Close to
Parents
Parents
Care
Parents
Friend
Who Carries Weapons to Schools?
Model Results: Peer Effects
Network Effects on Weapon Carrying
0.2
Peer Group Deviance
0.16
0.12
Social Outsiders
0.08
School Oriented Peer Group
0.04
0
0.08
0
0.19
1
0.3
2
0.41
3
0.52
4
Peer Context
0.63
5
0.74
6
0.85
7