Social Development Model

The social development model (SDM) is a theory of human behavior that is used to explain the origins and development of delinquent behavior during childhood and adolescence. By taking into account risk factors as well as protective influences, the SDM predicts whether children will develop prosocial or antisocial behavioral patterns as they age. The SDM is used by criminologists, child psychologists, and educators in order to identify and provide early intervention for children likely to develop antisocial dispositions. Researchers frequently use the SDM in order to carry out studies on adolescent drug and alcohol use, violence, and delinquent behavior. Recently, a number of studies have proven the applicability of the SDM to all children and adolescents in the United States, despite differences in ethnicity or gender.

Keywords Antisocial; Juvenile Delinquency; Prosocial; Protective Influence; Risk Factor; Social Development Model (SDM); Socializing Unit; Socioeconomic Status

Overview

The Social Development Model (SDM) is a theory of human behavior that is used to explain the origins and development of delinquent behavior during childhood and adolescence. By taking into account risk factors as well as protective influences, the SDM predicts whether children will develop prosocial or antisocial behavioral patterns as they age. The SDM hypothesizes that children adopt the beliefs and behavioral patterns of the social unit - such as family, peers, or neighborhood - to which they are most firmly bonded. If the social unit has prosocial attitudes, then the child adopts a prosocial orientation; if the social unit is antisocial, then the child often manifests problem behavior (Catalano, Kosterman, Hawkins, Newcomb, & Abbott, 1996).

The SDM is used by criminologists, child psychologists, and educators in order to identify and provide early intervention for children likely to develop antisocial dispositions. Researchers frequently use the SDM in order to carry out studies on adolescent drug and alcohol use, violence, and delinquent behavior. Several long-term studies that were undertaken during the 1980's and early 1990's have demonstrated the effectiveness of the SDM as a tool for improving children's adoption of prosocial beliefs and behaviors (Kosterman, Hawkins, Spoth, Haggerty & Zhu, 1997; O'Donnell, Michalak & Ames, 1997).

A long-running debate over the applicability of the SDM model to all children and adolescents in the United States across ethnic, gender, and regional differences has been settled in recent years. Numerous studies addressing this issue have provided evidence that the SDM can indeed be applied generally to all youths (Choi, Harachi, Gilmore, & Catalano, 2005; Fleming, Catalano, Oxford, & Harachi et al., 2002).

Applications

Why the Social Development Model Is Useful

There are many reasons why the social development model was initially developed, and why it continues to be such a useful tool for reducing the incidence of childhood behavioral problems, juvenile delinquency, and violent crimes committed by young adults.

Childhood Violence & Adult Violence

First, children who begin to use violence in childhood are at a high risk for committing serious violent offenses as adults. This risk diminishes when children first begin to use violence at later ages. For example, one study found 45% of children who took part in violent activities before they were 11 years of age had committed violent criminal offenses by the time they were in their early 20s. Among those children who had begun to use violence when they were between 11 and 12 years of age, only 25% had committed violent criminal offenses by the time they reached their early 20s. An even smaller percentage of children who began to use violence when they were between the ages of 13 and 17 had committed violent criminal offenses by their early 20s (Herrenkohl, Huang, Kosterman, Hawkins, Catalano, & Smith, 2001). Most young adults who commit serious criminal offenses begin to offend at around the age of 10, with their offenses escalating in seriousness gradually until the youths are approximately 17 years of age, at which time peak involvement in delinquent activities usually occurs (Ayers, Williams, Hawkins, Peterson, Catalano, & Abbott, 1999). All of this means that the sooner educational professionals can identify and treat violent or antisocial tendencies in young children, the more effective they will be at lowering the violent crime rate.

Concurrent Behaviors

Secondly, most children who commit delinquent behaviors tend to commit more than one. A child or young person who engages in truancy, for example, is likely to engage in vandalism or substance abuse as well. Moreover, such children are at a higher risk for developing school-related problems (Choi, Harachi, Gilmore, & Catalano, 2005). These facts indicate that the most effective way to deal with children who have behavior problems, as well as with juvenile delinquents, is to target not individual activities, but general antisocial attitudes and behaviors. The SDM allows educational professionals to do this because it traces the roots of the antisocial tendencies that manifest in various delinquent activities.

Chronic Offenders

Third, reducing crime rates among young people means targeting chronic, not isolated offenders. Studies have shown that more than 50% of adolescents living in the United States today participate in antisocial behaviors such as delinquency, violence, substance use and abuse, and risky sexual activity (Choi et al., 2005). Furthermore, most young people take part in a delinquent activity at least once during their adolescence. The average youth's participation in problem behaviors is infrequent and is of short duration, and accordingly accounts for only a small fraction of criminal offenses committed by juveniles. In contrast, more than 50% of all juvenile offenses, and almost all serious, violent crimes, are committed by a tiny minority of young people - between 5 and 10%. Accordingly, efforts to reduce juvenile crime rates should aim to target this 5-10% of youth who become chronic offenders. The SDM is so useful in this respect because it offers the possibility of predicting which youths are at risk of becoming chronic offenders before they even commit their first criminal offense. Valuable prevention and intervention resources could then be used to prevent these particular children from beginning to participate in delinquent activities, or to prevent them from escalating their involvement in these activities if they have already begun to participate in them (Ayers et al., 1999).

Environmental Influences

Finally, location and age both affect the likelihood that youth will manifest antisocial behaviors. While many problem behaviors, such as substance use, are universal problems among adolescents, affecting rural, urban, and suburban adolescents at a relatively constant rate, there are certain risk factors for these behaviors that are directly related to location (Kosterman et al., 1997; O'Donnell, Michalak & Ames, 1997). Sites of urban poverty, for example, usually feature low neighborhood attachment and community disorganization, both of which put children living in such areas at risk for developing antisocial attitudes and behaviors (O'Donnell, Michalak & Ames, 1997). In terms of age, evidence shows that children are particularly vulnerable to initiating or escalating their involvement in problem behaviors during transitional periods, such as the switch from home or pre-school to elementary school, elementary school to middle school, and middle school to high school (Kosterman et al., 1997; Ayers et al., 1999). The SDM addresses these points by predicting how anti-social community influences will affect youths coming from different types of family backgrounds, and at what transitional period points at-risk youth are likely to begin manifesting or escalating their involvement in problem behaviors.

How the Social Development Model Works

The social development model represents a synthesis of the most widely substantiated elements of three different theories used in the field of criminology to explain the etiology of antisocial behavior. It uses elements from control theory to identify factors that cause the development of antisocial behavior; elements from social learning theory to find factors that either encourage or put an end to antisocial behavior; and elements from differential association theory to identify the numerous separate paths that lead to either prosocial or antisocial behavior (Catalano et al., 1996).

Risk & Protective Factors

In predicting prosocial and antisocial behavior, the SDM takes into account both risk factors and protective factors. Risk and protective factors can be biological, psychological, or social. Social risk factors occur in various areas of social experience, such as within the family unit, at school, within peer groups, or within a community (Catalano et al., 1996). Socioeconomic status, age, ethnicity and gender all help to determine the types of risk and protective factors to which a child or adolescent will be exposed (Choi et al., 2005). Risk factors increase the probability that a child will become delinquent, while protective factors explain why some children who are at high risk for becoming delinquent fail to do so. Protective factors thus protect high-risk children from risk factors, or lessen the effects of exposure to these factors (Catalano et al., 1996).

Socialization

As its name suggests, the social development model is concerned with socializing processes. According to the SDM,

"Children are socialized through processes involving four constructs: (a) perceived opportunities for involvement in activities and interactions with others, (b) the degree of involvement and interaction, (c) the skills to participate in these involvements and interactions, and (d) the reinforcement they perceive as forthcoming from performance in activities and interactions" (cited in Catalano et al., 1996).

These constructs are ordered casually, meaning that the more opportunities a child perceives for social interactions, the more social interactions that child will participate in. This increase in social interactions causes the child to develop more social skills, which in turn allows the child to perceive more positive reinforcement for participating socially (Fleming, Catalano, Oxford, & Harachi et al., 2002).

When the socializing processes occur on a consistent basis, a social bond involving attachment and commitment forms between the child being socialized and the person or group by whom he or she is being socialized, or the socializing unit. Once this bond has formed and been reinforced, it begins to exhibit an influence on the child's future behavior, in that the bond the child feels will cause him or her to conform to the norms of the socializing unit. This is because deviant behavior, if exposed, could threaten the strength of the social bond. The child will thus behave in the way that the socializing unit behaves, and believe the same things that the socializing unit believes. Or, at a minimum, the child will have a disincentive to behave in different ways or believe different things (Catalano et al., 1996).

Socializing processes occur during four distinct developmental periods: the period during which a child stays at home or attends a preschool; elementary school; middle school; and high school (Catalano et al., 1996). The dominant socializing unit to which a child becomes bonded does not remain constant throughout these periods. Rather, the family unit dominates socialization during the home and elementary school periods, with school beginning to play a stronger role during the latter. During elementary school, peers and neighborhood influences begin to make an impact until they increasingly dominate socializing processes throughout middle and high school (Fleming et al., 2002).

Prosocial & Antisocial Paths

The socializing process eventually results in the child learning either prosocial or antisocial behavioral patterns. A socializing process that culminates in prosocial behavioral patterns develops along the following path: A child perceives opportunities for prosocial interactions; the child participates in prosocial interactions, and understands that he or she is positively rewarded for his or her participation; the child develops emotional, cognitive, and behavioral skills that allow him or her to earn, perceive and experience positive reinforcement. The prosocial path and the skills that it leads to thus culminate in a prosocial disposition. A child who has experienced such a socialization process will have internalized society's standards for normal behavior, and will believe in the rightness of society's laws and rules. The child will grow into a law-abiding citizen, whose beliefs inhibit him or her from participating in anti-social behavior (Catalano et al., 1996).

The SDM predicts that the path to antisocial behavior has three elements: A child perceives a reward for antisocial behavior; the child becomes bonded to persons, groups, or institutions that participate in antisocial behavior; the child develops beliefs in antisocial values. The more the child has bonded to antisocial units, the more committed the child becomes to antisocial behaviors and values. In direct contrast to the child with a prosocial orientation, the child with an antisocial orientation internalizes and normalizes a standard of behavior that is antisocial. The child often knows that this standard varies from society's normative rules of conduct, and rationalizes this difference by thinking of the antisocial standard as either an alternative to society's rules or as a code that supercedes society's rules (Catalano et al., 1996).

Of course, a child may experience elements from both of these paths. The elements from the first, prosocial path become protective factors, while the elements from the second, antisocial path become risk factors. When protective factors outweigh risk factors, the child will have a prosocial orientation, and when the risk factors outweigh protective factors, the child will have an antisocial orientation.

Studies that Have Used the Social Development Model

The social development model is a theory of human behavior, and is used by criminologists and child psychologists as a theoretical foundation upon which to carry out research studies. In order to apply the abstract concepts of the SDM to study participants, researchers gather data from participants about the social processes with which the SDM is concerned. Usually, they do this by asking participants questions or by interviewing a third party, such as a teacher, about the participants. Once this data is collected, researchers use a plethora of statistical models and equations in order to analyze it and draw conclusions.

Most researchers working with the SDM use it to predict the emergence of problem behavior in children in elementary school, middle school, and high school. Data is collected during one developmental period and is used to predict behavior in the next period. For example, researchers looking to predict which children will begin to exhibit behavioral problems during elementary school will look for prosocial and antisocial interactions during the home/preschool period (Catalano et al., 1996). This approach is especially effective since research has shown that youths frequently begin to exhibit problem behavior during the transitions between the four developmental periods (Ayers et al., 1999).

The long-term nature of the predictions made by the SDM necessitate that the researchers using it have access to the same group of study participants for long periods of time - most often a decade or more. Thus, these researchers usually complete longitudinal studies, which follow a group of children's development from the preschool or elementary school years all the way through high school.

Below, three studies utilizing the SDM are summarized. One of these studies uses the SDM to explain the etiology of violent behavior in adolescents, while the other two use the SDM as a tool for creating intervention and prevention programs aimed at reducing problem behavior in children and adolescents. The summaries below pay special attention to how the studies apply the abstract theory contained in the SDM to real student populations.

Using the SDM to Explain the Origins & Development of Violent Behavior

A study published in 2001 entitled "A comparison of social development processes leading to violent behavior in late adolescence for childhood initiators and adolescent initiators of violence" used the SDM to explain the differences between social processes that lead children who begin to use violence in childhood to continue to do so in adolescence, and the social processes that lead nonviolent children to begin to use violence during adolescence. This distinction is important because, as discussed previously, children who initiate violence during childhood rather than during adolescence are more likely to commit violent crimes as adults. In order to carry out this study, researchers utilized data gathered from a longitudinal study entitled The Seattle Social Development Project (SSDP), which monitored a group of children living in low-income, violence-prone school districts in Seattle from the time the children entered the fifth grade in 1985 through the time the youth were 18 years of age, in 1993 (Herrenkohl et al., 2001).

In order to construct etiologies of violent behavior beginning in childhood and adolescence, the researchers devised questions correlating with each of the SDM's four constructs, and which applied these constructs to the various social domains of home, peers, school and community. To measure opportunities for prosocial interaction, for example, researchers asked students if they knew where to join community clubs, knew how to participate in extracurricular activities, if they had nice neighborhood playgrounds to visit, and if they participated in family decision making, amongst other questions. To gauge opportunities for antisocial interaction, researchers asked whether students had been invited to join gangs, whether they had siblings or peers who used drugs, and whether their parents set firm rules of conduct at home. To measure prosocial and antisocial bonding, researchers asked whether students liked their teachers, classes, and school and whether they wanted to emulate their parents, or whether students wanted to emulate antisocial friends who used drugs or broke the law (Herrenkohl et al., 2001).

Various statistical methods were then used to translate the answers of these questions into data, which showed all prosocial and antisocial forces affecting the social development of the children in the study. Analysis of this data allowed researchers to conclude that there were no significant differences between the etiology of violent behavior initiated in childhood and the etiology of violent behavior initiated during adolescence. This means that even though childhood initiators of violence are more likely to commit violent crimes as adults than adolescent initiators of violence, there is no appreciable difference in the factors that lead these two groups to commit violence during adolescence. This conclusion led the researchers to suggest that prevention and intervention programs should be made available to adolescents as well as to younger children (Herrenkohl et al., 2001).

Using the SDM to Develop Effective Prevention & Intervention Programs

Two other studies, both published in 1997, focus on how the SDM can be used as a tool to create programs that effectively prevent students from engaging in antisocial behavior, or encourage students already engaged in such behavior to instead engage in prosocial behavior. The first study, entitled "Effects of a preventive parent-training intervention on observed family interactions: Proximal outcomes from preparing for the drug free years," investigates the extent to which parents can be trained to create a stronger, more pro-social bond between themselves and their children, and by doing so prevent their children from using substances during adolescence (Kosterman et al., 1997). The second study, entitled "Inner-city youths helping children after-school programs to promote bonding and reduce risk" investigated how after-school mentoring programs might help to build prosocial bonds between adolescents, the children they mentored, the children's school, and their community, and in doing so reduce the strength of antisocial bonds between these children and adolescents and various peer and neighborhood forces (O'Donnell, Michalak & Ames, 1997).

The first study tested the efficacy of Preparing for the Drug Free Years (PDFY), a parenting curriculum based on the theories of the SDM. The study used participants in two low-income school districts in the mid-west. Parents who participated in the study attended five workshops that focused on raising awareness about adolescent substance abuse; teaching parents how to communicate positively with their children and to set explicit rules about their children's behavior; teaching parents and their children skills with which to resist peer pressure; teaching parents how to manage conflict within the family in such a way as to reduce the frequency of negative interactions with their children; teaching parents to strengthen prosocial family bonding by creating opportunities for prosocial interaction and by rewarding children for participating in such interaction (Kosterman et al., 1997).

Prior to completing the series of workshops, the parents were measured for their skills in conducting proactive communication, their tendency to participate in negative interactions with their children, and for the overall quality of the relationship they had with their children. Then, after they completed the workshop, parents were measured in these areas again. Researchers found that compared to a control group that did not participate in the workshops, the parents who did participate had significantly improved the prosocial quality of the interactions they had with their children. The authors of the study hypothesized that this increase in prosocial bonding to the family unit should help to prevent adolescent substance abuse. This hypothesis, however, went untested (Kosterman et al., 1997).

The second study examined The Collaborative Afterschool Prevention Program, which was designed as a result of the 1992 findings of The Task Force on Youth Development and Community Programs. The after-school program used adolescents residing in inner-city neighborhoods as mentors for elementary school children also living in these neighborhoods. The program had the double aim of preventing the children from becoming involved in problem behaviors as adolescents by bonding them to prosocial units; and discouraging the adolescents from engaging in antisocial behavior by providing them with an opportunity for prosocial interaction. The mentors and children participated in various types of prosocial activities together, such as sports, field trips, arts and crafts, and community projects. The mentors rewarded the children for prosocial interactions and encouraged them to be open about their emotions and feelings.

Evidence from interviews conducted at the completion of the after-school program suggested that the adolescents and children were less likely to take part in antisocial behavior as a result of their involvement in the after-school program. As a result, the authors recommended that similar after-school programs based on the SDM theory should be instituted in other high-risk communities (O'Donnell, Michalak & Ames, 1997).

Viewpoints

Until recently, many researchers felt that there was not enough conclusive evidence proving that the social development model can be applied to different gender, ethnic, and income groups and achieve standard results (Fleming et al., 2002) One reason that this question of the generalizability of the SDM remained unsettled for so long is that early studies of the efficacy of the SDM were performed using populations that were overwhelmingly Caucasian, or whose race was unspecified (Choi et al., 2005). Two recent studies seems to have settled this question by proving that the SDM predicts behavior for African American, Asian Pacific Islander, multi-racial, and other non-Caucasian youth just as well as it does for American Caucasian youth. (Choi et al., 2005; Fleming et al. 2002).

Terms & Concepts

Antisocial: Used to describe beliefs, actions, and patterns of behavior that violate legal codes, including those relative to age. Includes violent as well as nonviolent crimes, as well as the use of illegal drugs and the abuse of legal ones.

Juvenile Delinquency: Criminal acts committed by juveniles, or youth under 18 years of age. Common types of juvenile delinquency include vandalism, violence, illegal drug use, and theft.

Prosocial: Used to describe beliefs, actions, and patterns of behavior that accord with legal codes and normative social values.

Protective Influence: Prosocial bonds that explain why some children who are at high risk for becoming delinquent fail to do so. Protect high-risk children from risk factors, or lessen the effects of exposure to these factors.

Risk Factor: A factor that increases the probability that a child will develop problematic patterns of behavior. Common risk factors include low socioeconomic status, living in a high-crime neighborhood, and having an older sibling who exhibits problem behavior.

Social Development Model (SDM): A theory of human behavior that is used to explain the origins and development of delinquent behavior during childhood and adolescence.

Socializing Unit: Any person, party, or institution that gives a child opportunities and rewards for social interaction, and thus forms a bond with the child. Common socializing units include parents, peers, community, and school.

Socioeconomic Status: A family's social and economic status, based on family income, educational levels, occupation, and social standing in the community.

Bibliography

Ayers, C. D., Williams, J. H., Hawkins, D. J., Peterson, P., Catalano, R., & Abbott, R. (1999). Assessing correlates of onset, escalation, deescalation, and desistance of delinquent behavior. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 15 , 277-306. Retrieved April 12, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=11303476&site=ehost-live

Catalano, R., Kosterman, R., Hawkins, J. D., Newcomb, M. & Abbott, R. (1996). Modeling the etiology of adolescent substance use: A test of the social development model. Journal of Drug Issues, 26 , 429-455. Retrieved April 12, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=9607110982&site=ehost-live

Choi, Y., Harachi, T., Gilmore, M, & Catalano, R. (2005). Applicability of the social development model to urban ethnic minority youth: Examining the relationship between external constraints, family socialization, and problem behaviors. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 15 , 505-534. Retrieved April 12, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=18942736&site=ehost-live

Chui, W., & Chan, H. (2012). An empirical investigation of social bonds and juvenile delinquency in Hong Kong. Child & Youth Care Forum, 41, 371-386. Retrieved December 15, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=77734905&site=ehost-live

Fleming, C., Catalano, R., Oxford, M., & Harachi, T. (2002). A test of the generalizability of the social development model across gender and income groups with longitudinal data from the elementary school development period. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 18 , 423-439. Retrieved April 12, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=11303538&site=ehost-live

Herrenkohl, T., Huang, B., Kosterman, R., Hawkins, D. J., Catalano, R. F., & Smith, B. H. (2001). A comparison of social development processes leading to violent behavior in late adolescence for childhood initiators and adolescent initiators of violence. Journal of Research in Crime & Delinquency, 38 , 45-63. Retrieved April 12, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=4017843&site=ehost-live

Kosterman, R., Hawkins, D. J., Spoth, R., Haggerty, K., & Zhu, K. (1997). Effects of a preventive parent-training intervention on observed family interactions: Proximal outcomes from preparing for the drug free years. Journal of Community Psychology, 25 , 337-352. Retrieved April 12, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=11771641&site=ehost-live

Maguire, E. R., Wells, W., & Katz, C. M. (2011). Measuring community risk and protective factors for adolescent problem behaviors: Evidence from a developing nation. Journal of Research in Crime & Delinquency, 48, 594-620. Retrieved December 15, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=67180645&site=ehost-live

O'Donnell, J., Michalak, E., & Ames, E. (1997). Inner-city youths helping children after-school programs to promote bonding and reduce risk. Social Work in Education, 19 , 231-241. Retrieved April 12, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=9711166719&site=ehost-live

Sullivan, C. J., & Hirschfield, P. (2011). Problem behavior in the middle school years: An assessment of the social development model. Journal of Research in Crime & Delinquency, 48, 566-593. Retrieved December 15, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=67180646&site=ehost-live

Suggested Reading

Catalano, R., Fleming, C., Haggerty, K., Abbott, R., Cortes, R., & Park, J. (2005). Mediator effects in the social development model: An examination of constituent theories. Criminal Behaviour & Mental Health, 15 , 221-235. Retrieved April 12, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=19457887&site=ehost-live

Hartwell, S. (2000). Juvenile delinquency and the social development model: The retrospective accounts of homeless substance abusers. Criminal Justice Policy Review, 11 , 217-233. Retrieved April 12, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=4578973&site=ehost-live

Kosterman, R., Hawkins, D. J., Guo, J., Catalano, R., & Abbott, R. (2000). The dynamics of alcohol and marijuana initiation: Patterns and predictors of first use in adolescence. American Journal of Public Health, 90 , 360-366. Retrieved April 12, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=2856527&site=ehost-live