Intro to Sociology
I choose to do my paper on “Playing Hooky”: Examining Factors that Contribute to Adolescent Truancy, because of the position I am currently in at work places me in several different school s all year long. I have seen the effects and causes of adolescent truancy first hand. This article is a review of previous data that was obtained from Youth Advocate Programs, Inc. This article clearly states that it is a research article, and the research is from a study that compiled data from 20 students. The researchers looked at all variables that play a factor in adolescent truancy, to include family environment, living situations, community involvement, severity of substance use, duration of substance use, and peer victimization.
Based on the research from the article on adolescent truancy I learned that truancy has become an ever growing problem and is caused from several different factors. Adolescent truancy is caused by multiple out-of-school and in-school factors. The majority of abscises are driven from outside factors, such as family problems, living conditions, substance use, and community involvement, and school factors, like bullying or hazing. Looking at the research by Dube and Orpinas(2009) it breaks it down into three main behavioral profile groups based on reinforcement be it negative and positive reinforcement, also no reinforcement. Positive reinforcement is things like skipping school to go to the mall or skate park things of that nature. Negative reinforcement is family conflict, living conditions, and substance problems. With substance abuse problems leads to more skipping school, and with skipping school leads to more substance abuse problems, so they both feed of each other. The research is supported by the data that was collected from a study that was done with 20 kids, ages 8-16 and grades 5th to 11th.
This article fits in the overall field of sociology because it takes something that needs to