The proposed study would examine issues related to the course, including persistence and desistance, of antisocial and related behaviors in the early adult period for men. Such behaviors are costly to society, financially, and in personal distress. These issues would be examined by extending a longitudinal study spanning later childhood into the mid 20s (ages 26-27 years) by the end of the current grant to a new developmental period (ages 27-28 to 31-32 years). The multimethod/multiagent study of a community sample at risk for antisocial behavior began with two cohorts of 4th-grade boys (total N = 206); the sample size is now 196 (age 24-25 years) (a 97 percent retention rate of living subjects). The study focused on contextual, family of origin, and peer risk factors based on a social learning model. ? ? We plan to use a dynamic developmental contextual approach, based on aspects of past and current social-contextual influences, to study stability and change in the constellation of behaviors associated with antisocial behavior in early adulthood, including crime and related key aspects of adult adjustment (e.g., health-risking sexual behavior and employment) and psychopathology (e.g., substance use and depressive symptoms). Hypotheses are based on the coercion model of family interaction (Patterson, 1982), developmental models of criminal involvement (e.g., Patterson, 1993), social influence including peer deviancy contexts (Dishion, Spracklen, Andrews, & Patterson, 1996), assortative partnering and intimate partner influence (Capaldi & Shortt, in press), and the developmental failure model (Capaldi, 1991, 1992). ? ? Assessments will include self-report, parental and peer reports, records data (police and DMV records), and assessment with a male peer at age 27-28 years. Assessments of the young man's relationship with an intimate partner and of his own parenting behaviors are conducted in two separate studies. A variety of complementary developmental modeling and prediction techniques will be used to capture the degree to which prior family and contextual factors, and prior behaviors in childhood and adolescence (e.g., antisocial behavior in childhood), and similar contextual, social relationships, and behavioral factors in adulthood can explain changes in the course of behaviors across the early adult period. ? ?
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