Gendered Opportunity and School-Based Victimization

• Date: 01 April 2018
• Published date: 01 April 2018
• DOI: 10.1177/1541204016680402
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Gendered Opportunity and

School-Based Victimization:

An Integrated Approach

Samuel Peterson

1

, Nicole V. Lasky

2

, Bonnie S. Fisher

1

,

and Pamela Wilcox

1

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.

Keywords

victimization, gender, opportunity, routine activities, peers

Adolescents are exposed to unique opportunities for school-based property and violent victimiza-

tion. Garofalo, Siegel, and Laub (1987) were among the first to examine opportunities for victimiza-

tion within the school context, finding that more than half of all reported adolescent victimizations

occurred at some point during the process of attending school. Decades of research have supported

this finding, showing that adolescent victimization risk is greater while inside school than outside of

school (e.g., Augustine, Wilcox, Ousey, & Clayton, 2002; Wilcox, Tillyer, & Fisher, 2009). The

2014 Indicators of School Crime and Safety, for example, reported that adolescents aged 12–18

experienced a rate of 55 per 1,000 nonfatal victimizations in school during 2013, which included

1

University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA

2

Northeastern State University, Tahlequah, OK, USA

Corresponding Author:

Samuel Peterson, School of Criminal Justice, University of Cincinnati, 550 Dyer Hall, Box 210389, Cincinnati, OH 45221,

USA.

Email: peters5@mail.uc.edu

Youth Violence and JuvenileJustice

2018, Vol. 16(2) 137-155

ªThe Author(s) 2016

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DOI: 10.1177/1541204016680402

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rates of 18 per 1,000 thefts and 37 per 1,000 assaults (Robers, Zhang, Morgan, & Musu-Gillette,

2015). These rates of in-school theft and assault victimization were higher than rates of theft and

assault outside school for this age range (16 and 15 per 1,000, respectively); this trend has been

documented since the late 1990s (Robers et al., 2015). Moreover, male students consistently expe-

rienced a greater rate of both types of victimization compared to females. For instance, in 2013,

males experienced a rate of 62 per 1,000 nonfatal victimizations, compared to the female rate of 47

per 1,000 (Robers et al., 2015).

Three parallel, but distinct, bodies of research have developed to explain opportunities for

adolescent school-based victimization focusing on the effects of (1) lifestyles and routine activ-

ities, (2) low self-control, and (3) friends’ characteristics. First, researchers working within the

lifestyle–routine activity approach have well established that school-based opportunities for vic-

timization are related to adolescents’ lifestyles and routine activities, such as playing sports,

joining clubs, or taking part in unstructured and/or delinquent activities (e.g., Peguero, 2008).

Additionally, low self-control likely plays an antecedent or concurrent role to the lifestyles and

routine activities predicting victimization (for a recent review, see Wilcox, Fisher, & Lasky,

2015). Finally, other researchers have reported that friends’ characteristics, such as associating

with opposite-sex friends, can increase adolescents’ risks for both delinquency and victimization

(Haynie&Soller,2015;McGloin&DiPietro,2013).Importantly,researchersusingeachofthese

three approaches have considered the interplay of gender, examining the extent to wh ich gender

moderates the effects of lifestyles and routine activities, low self-control, or friends’ characteris-

tics on property and violent victimization.

Despite the theoretical contributions of such research, no published study to date has considered,

simultaneously, the interrelationships among all three key constructs—lifestyles and routine activ-

ities, low self-control, and friends’ characteristics—in estimating pathways to victimization. This

study takes the logical next step to explain adolescent school-based victimization by integrating

these distinct bodies of research. Specifically, we present a multiple-group structural equation model

(SEM) analysis of a large, national sample of 10th-grade high school students drawn from the 2002

Education Longitudinal Study (ELS: 2002). We test whether and how lifestyles and routine activ-

ities mediate the relationship between low self-control and friends’ characteristics to create different

victimization opportunities for male and female adolescents. To that end, in the next section, we

review the victimization research concerning the effects of school-based and delinquent lifestyles

and routine activities, low self-control, and friends’ characteristics and highlight relevant findings

about the moderating role of gender within each section. Next, we integrate these three lines of

research into one conceptual model explaining school-based victimization, and then, we present the

methods and data used in the current study.

Literature Review

Lifestyle–Routine Activity Theory, Gender, and Victimization

Researchers have well established that criminal victimization is partly a function of lifestyles and

routine activities, which results in the convergence of motivated offenders and suitable targets in the

absence of capable guardianship (Cohen & Felson, 1979; Cohen, Kleugal, & Land, 1981). Accord-

ing to this perspective, certain lifestyles and routines affect exposure and/or proximity to motivated

offenders, increase perceived target suitability, and decrease levels of capable guardianship, thereby

influencing victimization risk.

School-based activities. In line with the idea that crime opportunity emerges from legitimate, everyday

activity (Cohen & Felson, 1979), a number of studies have found that even structured activities

138 Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice 16(2)