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Assistant Professor, Dept. of Crime, Law, and Justice
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Pennsylvania
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Department
of Crime, Law and
Justice
tel:
814- 867-0217 Email:dkreager@psu.edu |
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Last Updated: 6/10/2009 |
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Interests
Criminology, Quantitative Methods,
Adolescent Sexuality, Networks, Life Course
My research centers on testing theoretical hypotheses as
they apply to juvenile delinquency and adolescent development. I am interested
in examining how adolescent social networks either inhibit or contribute to
individual criminal behaviors. To this end, I am working with the sociometric
data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and PROSPER
Peers Project to locate teenagers within their peer friendship networks and
test how these positions relate to subsequent behavior.
In addition to my research of adolescent social networks, I
am also working with Prof. Ross Matsueda to analyze data from the Denver Youth
Study. This dataset is a rich source of measures applicable to theories of
rational choice and trajectories of crime. We are currently preparing several
papers testing the underlying assumptions of rational choice theory. In
addition, we are looking at trajectories of adolescent behavior to examine if
chronic offenders exist as a distinct criminal type and identify any possible
mechanisms for such a typology.
Home
Published
Papers
Derek A. Kreager. 2004.
"Strangers in the Halls: Isolation and Delinquency in School
Networks." Social Forces 82(5).
Abstract
- Although criminologists have long recognized the strong correlation
between a person’s delinquency and the delinquency of his or her friends, the
mechanisms underlying this relationship remain elusive. The current study adds
to research on peers and delinquency by exploring the behaviors of adolescents
isolated from school friendship networks. Data from the National Longitudinal
Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) allow me to identify an isolated
population and test theoretically derived hypotheses. Results suggest that low
peer attachment in and of itself fails to increase future delinquency. However,
isolation in conjunction with problematic peer encounters at school was found
to significantly increase delinquency and delinquent peer associations. The theoretical
implications of this interaction are discussed.
Ross L. Matsueda,
Derek A. Kreager, and David Huizinga. 2006. “Deterring Delinquents: A Rational
Choice Model of Theft and Violence.” American
Sociological Review 71(1).
Abstract
- This paper examines criminal behavior from a rational choice
perspective, the set of behavioral principles underlying our legal
institution. Using a subjective utility
approach, we specify experiential learning models of the formation of risk
perceptions and rational choice models of theft and violence. We estimate our models using panel data on
high risk youth from the Denver Youth Survey.
Using random effects tobit models of perceived risk and negative
binomial models of counts of criminal acts, we find support for a rational
choice model. Perceived risk follows a
Bayesian updating model in which current risk perceptions are a function of
prior risk perceptions plus new information based on experience with crime and
arrest and observations of peers. Theft
and violence are a function of the perceived risk of arrest, subjective psychic
rewards (including excitement and social status), and perceived opportunities.
Derek A. Kreager. 2007.
“Unnecessary Roughness? School Sports, Peer Networks, and Male Adolescent Violence.”
American Sociological Review 72(5).
This study examines the extent to which
participation in high school interscholastic sports contributes to male
adolescent violence. Deriving competing hypotheses from social control, social
learning, and masculinity theories, it uses data from the National Longitudinal
Study of Adolescent Health to test if (1) type of sport, and (2) peer athletic
participation, contribute to the risks of male serious fighting. Contrary to
social control expectations, findings suggest that athletic involvement fails
to inhibit male violence. Moreover,
there is a strong relationship between contact sports and violence. Football
players and wrestlers, as opposed to baseball, basketball, tennis, and other
athletes, are significantly more likely than non-athletic males to be involved
in a serious fight. Additionally, the direct effect of football is explained by
the football participation of individuals’ peers. Males whose friends play
football are more likely to fight than other males, supporting perspectives
that emphasize peer contexts as important mediators for male violence. Overall,
findings are consistent with the expectations of social learning and
masculinity arguments. The theoretical and policy implications of these results
are discussed.
Derek A. Kreager.
2007. “When it’s Good to be ‘Bad’: Violence and Adolescent Peer Acceptance.” Criminology 45(4).
This article examines the relationship between adolescent violence and peer acceptance in school. Deriving hypotheses from subcultural theories of crime and violence, it tests whether the violence-status relationship varies across students’ socio-demographic characteristics and educational contexts. Analyses of school network data collected from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health suggest that violence generally holds a negative relationship to peer friendship nominations for both males and females. However, for males, this effect varies by students’ educational standing. Violence shows a modest positive association to peer acceptance for males who perform poorly in school. There is no evidence that race moderates the violence-status relationship. These findings are replicated in longitudinal analyses of a large metropolitan high school. For females, violence has a significant negative relationship to peer status that does not vary by individual characteristics. However, school levels of violence moderate the relationship between social status and female violence, such that violent females have greater numbers of friendships in highly violent schools. The implications of these findings for peer research and delinquency theory are discussed.
Jeremy Staff and
Derek A. Kreager. 2008. “Too Cool for School? Violence, Peer Status, and High
School Dropout.” Social Forces 87(1).
Research shows that peer status in adolescence is positively associated with school achievement and adjustment. However, subculture theories of juvenile delinquency and school-based ethnographies suggest that (1) disadvantaged boys are often able to gain peer status through violence and (2) membership in violent groups undermines educational attainment. Building on these ideas, we use peer network data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) to examine whether peer status within highly violent groups increases male risks of high school dropout. Consistent with the subcultural argument, we find that disadvantaged boys with high status in violent groups are at much greater risks of high school dropout than other students.
Derek A. Kreager. 2008.
“Guarded Borders: Interracial Teen Dating and Problems with Peers and Parents.”
Social Forces 87(2).
Race scholars have long viewed inter-group
romantic relationships as barometers for racial equality, and although formal
barriers to these relationships have eroded over time, interracial unions
remain infrequent. Low intermarriage rates may be partially explained by the
informal social sanctions leveled at young interracial romances. This study
tests whether adolescents who interracially date are at greater risks of
violent victimization and peer and parent difficulties than intra-racial and
non-dating peers. Results demonstrate that strong relationships exist between
adolescent interracial dating and negative social encounters. These
relationships persist after controlling for a host of covariates and
self-selection variables. Implications
of the results for future intermarriage rates and public policy are discussed.
Kreager, Derek A. and
Jeremy Staff. 2009. “The Sexual Double Standard and Adolescent Peer
Acceptance.” Social Psychology Quarterly.
The belief that women and men are held to different standards of sexual conduct is pervasive in contemporary American society. According to the sexual double standard, boys and men are rewarded and praised for heterosexual sexual contacts, whereas girls and women are derogated and stigmatized for similar behaviors. Although widely held by the general public, research findings on the sexual double standard remain equivocal, with qualitative studies and early attitudinal surveys generally finding evidence of the double standard and more recent experimental vignette designs often failing to find similar results. In this study, we extend prior research by directly measuring the social status of sexually permissive youth. We use data collected from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to relate adolescents’ self-reported numbers of sexual partners to a network measure of peer acceptance. Results suggest that the association between lifetime sexual partnerships and peer status varies significantly by gender, such that greater numbers of sexual partners are positively correlated with boys’ peer acceptance, but negatively correlated with girls’ peer acceptance. Moreover, the relationship between boys’ sexual behaviors and peer acceptance is moderated by socioeconomic origins; sexually permissive boys from disadvantaged backgrounds are predicted to have more friendships than permissive boys from more advantaged backgrounds. Our results thus support the existence of an adolescent sexual double standard and suggest that sexual norms vary by both gender and socioeconomic origins.
Kreager, Derek A., Ross L. Matsueda, and
Elena Erosheva. Forthcoming. “Motherhood and Criminal Desistance in
Disadvantaged Neighborhoods.” Criminology.
Evidence from
several qualitative studies suggests that the transition to motherhood has
strong inhibitory effects on poor women’s delinquency and drug use trajectories.
Quantitative studies, however, typically fail to find significant parenthood or
motherhood effects. We argue that the latter research has typically not
examined motherhood in disadvantaged settings or applied the appropriate
statistical method. Focusing on within-individual change, we test the
motherhood hypothesis using a sample of over five-hundred women living in
disadvantaged
Working Paper Abstracts
Derek A. Kreager,
Christopher Lyons, and Zachary Hays. “Condos, Coffeeshops, and Crime:
Gentrification and Seattle Crime Trends.”
This study examines the relationship between
inner-city crime and urban revitalization or “gentrification.” Drawing on
recent urban research, we hypothesize that gentrification progressed rapidly in
many American cities over the last decade, and that these changes had
implications for area crime rates. Criminological theories hold competing
hypotheses for the connections between gentrification and crime, and not since
the late 1980’s have criminologists quantitatively examined these links. Using
thirty years of
Derek A. Kreager,
Sarah Koon-Magnin, and Barry Ruback. “Are High School Seniors Who Date Freshmen
Sexual Predators? Re-Assesing the Link between Partner Age-Span and Girls’
Reproductive Health.”
An extensive
literature suggests that teenage girls who date substantially older male
partners are at increased risks of negative health outcomes, including
unprotected sex and teenage pregnancy. These findings are consistent with statutory
rape laws, which prohibit sexual involvement with adolescents below the age of
consent. However, prior research has generally ignored the social contexts of
adolescent romance and potential threshold effects in the relationship between
age and sexual risk. Analyses of a national sample of early adolescent female
romantic relationships reveal that, consistent with prior research, girls with
substantially older male partners are at greater risks of sexual intercourse
than are girls with similarly-aged boyfriends. However, this effect holds only
for girls aged sixteen and under and is fully attenuated when the partner’s
educational status is controlled. Thus, the sexual risks associated with dating
an older partner primarily apply to younger girls with partners who have exited
secondary education. These findings are consistent with the normative contexts
of adolescence and have implications for statutory rape legislation.
Links
The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports – Find official crime statistics reported by the
nation’s police departments.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics Page
– Has a description and data from the
National Crime Victimization Survey.
The 2000 Census
Factfinder – Use the Search
commands to find demographic and social characteristics at the national, state,
city, tract or blockgroup level.