title: Assaultive adolescents: family decision-making parameters.
abstract: This article presents the results of a pilot study that investigated the family decision-making styles of families with a violent adolescent (17) and families with a normal adolescent (12). The results, utilizing an unrevealed differences family interactional test, showed that families with an assaultive teenager when contrasted with normal families had: (a) less agreement when making choices as a group; (b) less agreement between mother and violent son when making choices about activities; (c) sons who had less influence in the families' choice of activities; and, (d) mothers who "dictated" the families' decisions more often. The meanings of these findings and others are discussed by the authors as they relate to the problem of assaultive youths.
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000374:Aggression / Q000523:psychology; D003142:Communication; D003657:Decision Making; D005190:Family; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007604:Juvenile Delinquency / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D011340:Problem Solving; D014754:Violence