2021 · Book chapter · English
Great Britain
Farrington, D. P., Utting, D., & Axford, N.
Farrington, D. P., Utting, D., & Axford, N. (2021). Great Britain. In D. P. Farrington, H. Jonkman, & F. Groeger-Roth (Eds.), Delinquency and Substance Use in Europe: Understanding Risk and Protective Factors (pp. 21–39). Springer. doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58442-9_2
Summary
Chapter on Great Britain in the edited volume Delinquency and Substance Use in Europe, which grew out of the CTC-EU project's cross-national survey comparison. It reports results of the Communities That Care Youth Survey administered in 2001 to a school-based national representative sample of 14,445 pupils aged 11 to 16 in England, Scotland and Wales, the survey originally published by Beinart et al. (2002) for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. The chapter sets out the British history of CTC and the survey's measurement of risk and protective factors and problem behaviour. Results: 32 per cent of boys and 21 per cent of girls were classified as delinquents, and 16 per cent of each sex as drug users; both increased with age. The most important explanatory risk factors for delinquency and drug use were availability of drugs, parental attitudes condoning problem behaviour, low commitment to school, a family history of problem behaviour and poor parental supervision; the strongest protective factors were family opportunities and rewards for prosocial involvement and family attachment. The authors present these as targets for interventions. A secondary analysis of a two-decade-old survey; it evaluates no CTC process.