Ain't Misbehavin': Adolescent Values and Family Environments as Correlates of Misconduct in Australia, Hong Kong, and the United States

Abstract

Tenth and 11th grade boys and girls in Hong Kong ( N = 141), Australia (N = 155), and the United States (N = 155) completed questionnaires about their misconduct, family environments, and values. Relative to Australian and American youth, Hong Kong adolescents reported less misconduct; described their families as less accepting/engaged and less demanding; and placed less value on general individualism, outward success, and individual competence, and more value on tradition, prosocial outcomes, and the family as living unit. However, despite these differences, levels of adolescent misconduct were related in similar ways to family environments and adolescent values in all three cultures. Valuing outward success, on the part of the adolescent, and low levels of monitoring, on the part of parents, were associated with misconduct. In regression analyses, family environments and adolescent values were better predictors of misconduct than was cultural group; each contributed approximately twice the amount of variance as did culture. Discussion focuses on the similar pattern of associations across the three cultures and on the lack of correspondence between the variables which account for individual differences within each group and those which account for cross-cultural differences.