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Adolescent Aggression: Effects of Gender and Family and School Environments

NCJ Number
223826
Journal
Journal of Adolescence Volume: 31 Issue: 4 Dated: August 2008 Pages: 433-450
Author(s)
Estefania Estevez Lopez; Sergio Murgui Perez; Gonzalo Musitu Ochoa; David Moreno Ruiz
Date Published
August 2008
Length
18 pages
Annotation
This study examined the influence of family and classroom environments on the development of particular individual characteristics, including level of empathy, attitude to institutional authority and perceived social reputation, and the relationships among these characteristics and the student’s involvement in aggressive acts at school.
Abstract
Findings show that family and school environment are linked in scientific literature to psychosocial and behavioural adjustment problems in the adolescent period. The findings in this study were examined separately by gender, since some differences between boys and girls were found with respect to the influence on the quality of family interactions on the development of behavioural problems in adolescence. Other studies suggest that family risk factors, such as weak affective and cohesion and low parental support, are more strongly related to aggressive behavior in girls than in boys (Blum, Ireland, & Blum, 2003: Flood-Page, Campbell, Harrington, & Miller, 2000). In the school environment, being academically successful, perceiving peers as friends, and having positive interactions with teachers have all recently been singled out as important for an adolescent’s psychosocial adjustment (Andreou, 2000; Blankemeyer, Flannery, and Vazsonyi, 2002; Reinke and Herman, 2002). This applied to boys more so than girls. Participants were 1,319 adolescents attending secondary education in 7 public schools in Valencia; ages ranged from 11 to 16; 47 percent were boys and 53 percent were girls. Tables, figures and references