title: Does Alcohol or Delinquency Help Adolescents Feel Better Over Time? A Study on the Influence of Heavy Drinking and Violent/Property Offending on Negative Emotions.
abstract: Conceptualizing adolescent drinking and delinquency as adaptations to strain, we explore whether they (a) decrease or increase the probability of feeling depression and anxiety later and (b) ameliorate or aggravate the effect of strain on the negative emotions over time. These relationships are also examined for gender differences by analyzing data separately for males and females as well as both combined. We conducted ordinary least squares regression analysis of panel data from the first two waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. Heavy drinking and serious delinquency were found to increase the probability of feeling depression and anxiety later, whereas they tend to ameliorate the emotionally deleterious effect of strain for males and, to a lesser extent, females.
authors.affiliation: Baylor University, Waco, TX, USA Sung_Joon_Jang@baylor.edu.
authors.forename: Sung Joon
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Jang
authors.affiliation: Baylor University, Waco, TX, USA.
authors.forename: Todd W
authors.initials: TW
authors.lastname: Ferguson
authors.affiliation: Hardin-Simmons University, Abilene, TX, USA.
authors.forename: Jeremy R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Rhodes
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior; D000428:Alcohol Drinking / Q000523:psychology*; D001007:Anxiety / Q000523:psychology*; D003863:Depression / Q000523:psychology*; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006306:Health Surveys; D006801:Humans; D007604:Juvenile Delinquency / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D012737:Sex Factors; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000150:complications; D014481:United States
keywords: adolescent drinking; delinquency; emotional coping; gender; general strain theory