| Social scientists have become increasingly interested in the link between adolescent leisure time and deviant behavior (Agnew & Petersen, 1989; Junger & Polder, 1922; Junger & Wiegersma, 1995; McQuoid, 1996; Riley, 1987). Few researchers have extended this line of work to test whether differences in rates of leisure activities can be used to explain existing cross-cultural differences in deviance (cf. Osgood, Wilson, Omally, Bachman & Johnson, 1996). The current study 1) examined differences in leisure and deviance by country and sex, and 2) tested whether cross-national differences in leisure time could account for cross-national differences in deviant behavior. Self-report data were collected from N=6,914 adolescents from four different countries (Hungary, Netherlands, Switzerland, United States; Vazsonyiu, Pickering, Junger, & Hessing, in press). Measures included demographic variables, leisure (11 items in 4 domains), and lifetime deviance (the Normative Deviance Scale [NDS; Vazsonyiu & Pickering, 2000] contains 55 items in 7 subscales). Results indicated that when residualized using leisure domains, mean level differences in deviance by country and sex were significantly reduced. These results seem to indicate that cross-national differences in rates of deviant behavior can be explained by differences in leisure activities. Additional analyses in this area will focus on the specific nature of these differences.
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Updated 05/20/2006