Developmental and life-course pathways for antisocial behaviour among young adults in the Western Cape, South Africa
Doctoral Thesis
2021
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Abstract
The aim of this quantitative research project was to explore developmental and life-course theories explaining antisocial behaviour among 413 young adults in the Western Cape, South Africa. Interviewer-administered questionnaires were used to collect data among 135 youth from lower income communities in Cape Town. A further 278 responses were collected from undergraduate students from the University of Cape Town. The questionnaire included 6 psychological assessment tools that measured childhood adversity, deviant and anti-social behaviours, cognitions, and attitudes as well as pro-social functioning. The responses to the scales were analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), version 25, in attempts to answer four key research questions. The four research questions were centred around exploring childhood adversity, anti/pro social behaviours, and five different developmental and life-course theories within a South African context. The results showed that deviant behaviours increased as adverse childhood experiences increased, with physical neglect, witnessing domestic violence, and household incarceration as particularly strong risk factors. The findings also showed that some of the key features of each of the five theories in question could generally be applied to South African youth. Furthermore, there was evidence in this study that adaptive coping was linked to more prosocial attitudes, albeit the correlations were not particularly strong. Finally, findings suggested some issues with the validity of the assessment scales for deviance, antisocial and prosocial functioning in the South African context. This highlights a need for more research into context-specific and culturally relevant assessment scales in South Africa.
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Campbell, E. 2021. Developmental and life-course pathways for antisocial behaviour among young adults in the Western Cape, South Africa. . ,Faculty of Humanities ,Department of Social Development. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/35601