| Subcultural theories have historically played a central role in the explanation of delinquency. Little reswearch examines the sources of such attitudes, and less still examines direct effects of community characteristicxs such as concentrated disadvantage. Accordingly, we examine the relationship between community characteristics (measured using attached zip-code and county census data) and individual-level attitudes toward delinquency. The data are drawn from waves 1 and 2 of the National Educational Longitudinal Survey (1988, 1990). We control for a host of individual characteristics such as prior delinquency and family well-being, and employ analytic techniques appropriate for hierarchial data. Our analysis suggests that community characteristics matter. |
Updated 05/20/2006