Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item REDUCING THE EFFECT OF PATERNAL INCARCERATION ON JUVENILE DELINQUENCY: THE ROLE OF PROSOCIAL FRIENDSHIP NETWORKS(2023) Lebron, Michael Jacob; McGloin, Jean M; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Paternal incarceration is associated with a wide array of negative developmental outcomes for children who are reared in this context, thus perpetuating intergenerational patterns of cumulative disadvantage. Recent scholarship from Giordano et al. (2019) has called for research investigating factors associated with intergenerational discontinuities in the life-course trajectories of children with incarcerated parents. There is reason to believe that prosocial peers may serve as a potential protective factor capable of ameliorating the negative developmental consequences of paternal incarceration. This thesis uses data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to explore whether prosocial friends can attenuate the elevated risk of delinquency and substance use which are often associated with paternal incarceration. The results suggest that prosocial friends are generally related to decreased propensity for delinquency and substance use, but they do not buffer the effect of paternal incarceration on adolescent delinquency and substance use. In the end, prosocial friends show promise as a universal protective factor among adolescents, which has meaningful implications for future research and interventions designed to set youth on more positive developmental trajectories.Item Explaining Resilience to Peer Influence: The Role of Decision-Making(2020) Deitzer, Jessica; McGloin, Jean M; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Researchers often discuss deviant peers as if they are a deterministic risk for an adolescent's own delinquency. There is a strong, consistent link between the two, especially in adolescence. Yet, some adolescents act counter to predictions and display resilience to deviant peer influence. Paternoster and Pogarsky’s (2009) concept of thoughtfully reflective decision-making (TRDM) may add to our understanding of resilience to deviant peer exposure; individuals who make slow, deliberate decisions may be more likely to avoid the pitfalls associated with deviant peers, perhaps by selecting out of deviant social networks. In this dissertation, I use longitudinal data from the PROSPER Peers project in the context of adolescents in rural schools to 1) identify and describe a group of youth that displays resilience to deviant peer influence and 2) investigate whether decision-making skills differentiate those who demonstrate resilience from those who do not. I leverage structural equation modeling (SEM) to examine the role of TRDM in fostering resilience to deviant peer influence. Specifically, I test whether TRDM moderates the impact of deviant peer exposure on resilience directly or indirectly, through prompting changes to the adolescents’ social networks. I estimate SEM models that test these relationships using interaction and multigroup models separately for each starting wave. I find evidence that TRDM promotes resilience to deviant peer influence across waves. My results also provide evidence of a nonlinear interaction between deviant peer exposure and TRDM, whereby TRDM is most protective for adolescents with a high degree (but not entirely) deviant peer group in for analyses starting in 6th or 7th grade. I do not find evidence of a consistent association between TRDM and a change in adolescents’ proportion of deviant peers at the next wave or any partial or full reduction to the direct impact of TRDM on resilience when including this indirect pathway. Thus, I conclude that TRDM does not appear to have an indirect impact on resilience through prompting prosocial change to adolescents’ friend groups. Finally, I discuss the limitations of my study, along with its implications for theory, practice, and future research.Item The Forgotten Peer for Black Adolescents(2014) Rowan, Zachary; McGloin, Jean M.; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Efforts to understand peer influence among adolescents have established the robust relationship between having deviant peers and future deviant behavior. Nonetheless, research suggests peer influence affects different types of adolescents in different ways. Specifically, Black adolescents may be less susceptible to friends compared to White adolescents and possess stronger family-orientation, suggesting that another peer may assume a heightened salience. Namely, siblings may affect deviance of Black adolescents whereas friends will have a minimal impact. This thesis used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to evaluate the relative strength of friend and sibling influence on Black and White adolescent deviant behavior. Results indicate that siblings explain Black and White adolescent drinking and smoking; however, the effect of siblings is stronger among Black adolescents. Friends only emerge as a significant predictor of delinquency for White adolescents. Methodological and theoretical implications for future research on peer processes are discussed.Item Understanding the Mechanisms Responsible for the Positive Impact of After-School Programs(2005-04-27) Courtney, Shannon; Gottfredson, Denise C; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)After-school programs have gained considerable attention for their potential to reduce delinquency after school. The current study assessed the factors related to effective after-school programming utilizing survey data from a recent evaluation of after-school programs. Program participation was responsible for reducing property, violent, and general offending, but not substance use. Further analysis concluded that the hypothesized increase in parental supervision, increase in positive peer influence, and reduction in unsupervised time were insufficient to explain the ability of after-school programs to elicit behavioral improvements. After-school programs were also found to be equally effective for youth from high and low income families.