Role of Peer Ethnic Diversity on Adolescent Delinquency Trajectories for African American, Asian American, Hispanic, and White Youth

Background/Significance: The age-crime curve suggests that delinquency increases during preadolescence, peaks between mid to late adolescence, and then decreases thereafter. Past studies have not examined the role of peer ethnic diversity on delinquency trajectories.

Objective/Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of peer ethnic diversity on adolescent delinquency trajectories across the four major racial/ethnic groups in the U.S.

Methods: Sample included 18,753 youth from the Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, and 9,000 youth from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth. Measures included an ethnic diversity index that represents the proportion of youth's friends, best friend, dating partner, first sexual partner, and recent sexual partner who are of a different ethnicity. Trajectories and multigroup analyses were modeled using Mplus 5.21 statistical software. The effect of peer ethnic diversity covariates on the delinquency intercept and slope(s) was determined by regressing each intercept and slope on the evaluated covariate for each racial group. Results: With respect to delinquency trajectories, factor invariance was supported for the intercepts and slopes across all groups. With respect to covariates, for Whites and Hispanic, ethnic matching of best friend decreased the initial intercept. For Asian Americans and Whites, ethnic matching of first sexual partner decreased the initial intercept, whereas ethnic matching of current sexual partner increased the initial intercept for African Americans.

Discussion/conclusions: The role of peers' ethnicity cannot be discounted as an important factor in influencing adolescent delinquency trajectories.