Gendered Opportunity and School-Based Victimization

Abstract

Opportunity theory suggests that adolescents' risks for school-based theft and assault victimization are related to low self-control and school-based routine activities, such as playing sports, joining extracurricular clubs, and engaging in unsupervised activities. Peer research indicates that friends' characteristics may also create opportunities for victimization. Additional research supports that gender moderates the effects that lifestyles and friends have on victimization. We integrate these lines of inquiry by exploring how gender moderates the relationship among low self-control, routine activities, friends' characteristics, and school-based victimization using a sample of 10th-grade public school students who participated in the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002. Using structural equation models, our results suggest that friends' characteristics tend to matter more for females across both types of victimization. Other gendered effects exist-indicating that the effects of certain friends' characteristics vary by gender according to the extent to which they influence participation in school misconduct.

School-Based Violent Victimization in Turkey: Are Correlates Gender-Specific?

“…Findings revealed several gender differences regarding “pathways to victimization.” For example, prosocial friends had a significant direct negative effect on violent victimization for females only, though prosocial friends had similar indirect negative effects on male and female violent victimization, through routine activities. While friend characteristics seemed related to victimization in unique ways for males and females, Peterson et al (2018) found that low self-control exerted largely similar direct and indirect effects on violent victimization across gender (though the effect was stronger for males).…”

“…Peterson et al (2018) estimated structural equation models to examine potential gender differences in total, direct, and indirect effects of low self-control, friend’s characteristics, and routine activities on school-based violent victimization, using a national sample of 10th graders in U.S. public schools. Findings revealed several gender differences regarding “pathways to victimization.” For example, prosocial friends had a significant direct negative effect on violent victimization for females only, though prosocial friends had similar indirect negative effects on male and female violent victimization, through routine activities.…”

“…Further complicating comparison across the four studies, reviewed above, that examined the potentially gendered nature of opportunity for middle- and high school–based victimization is that they used different measures of violent victimization. One study focused on assault specifically (Wilcox et al, 2009), one focused on bullying victimization (Cho et al, 2016), and two used measures that combined several types of violence (Peterson et al, 2018; Popp & Peguero, 2011). Thus, a coherent picture of gendered opportunity for school-based violence remains elusive, and further study is needed.…”

“…Taken together, the research reviewed above suggests that there are moderately consistent effects of low self-control/impulsivity, certain school activities, delinquency/criminal behavior, and peer relationships on general victimization as well as school-based violent victimization, more specifically. All of these characteristics are increasingly viewed as compatible for understanding victimization in that they underlie a broadened conceptualization of victimization opportunity—one that views opportunity emerging from routine activities and lifestyle—including the characteristics of one’s social network—and low self-control (e.g., Peterson et al, 2018; Schreck, 1999). Furthermore, a small body of work suggests that such effects sometimes vary for male and female students, by exerting stronger or weaker effects across gender.…”

“…This explanatory work is largely based on Western samples (e.g., the United States, Canada, Great Britain), and it is strongly rooted in an opportunity perspective that integrates lifestyle-routine activities and self-control theories (Schreck, 1999; Tillyer, Wilcox, & Fissel, 2018; Wilcox, Tillyer, & Fisher, 2009). However, growing empirical research suggests that the effects of lifestyle-routine activities and low self-control on violent victimization may not be the same for male and female students, with key U.S.-based findings suggesting instead that there may be some dimensions of opportunity for school-based victimization that are gendered (Peterson, Lasky, Fisher, & Wilcox, 2018; Popp & Peguero, 2011; Wilcox et al, 2009). In Turkey, there is evidence that male students may experience more victimization than females (e.g., Ayas & Pişkin, 2011; Turkish Statistical Institute [TUIK], 2016), but there is little knowledge of the correlates of school-based victimization and whether such correlates differ by gender among Turkish youths.…”