This project proposes to analyze and integrate ethnographic and survey data from a three year longitudinal study of a cohort of early adolescents. The focus of the study is on the emergence of deviant and delinquent behavior as the cohort members make the transition from grammar school to junior high school and complete the latter. Deviance and delinquency are considered in terms of three independent variables - family, peers, and school relationships. Variation within the cohort cross-sectionally and over time is interpreted within a dialectic framework. This framework enables us to look at the social-psychological meaning of family, peers, and authority relationships and, in turn, to see how these meanings are incorporated, overtime, into specific patterns of appropriate or deviant/delinquent behavior. The data base consists of data from a 90 minute survey given at the end of 6th, 7th and 8th grade to each member of the cohort along with extensive ethnographic observations and interviews with cohort members, their parents and teachers. Integrating the quantitative and qualitative data to provide a comprehensive and detailed picture of the deviance/delinquency process is a key feature of the proposal project.
