Teens and Risk Taking Behavior

      As a mother of a thirteen year old girl, the assigned topic of adolescent risk taking is particularly engaging to me. It is always important to me that I submit well thought out class work, but in this instance, I have a much deeper drive to make sure I understand the issue fully.  My fear as a mother is that my daughter will become a part of the statistical percentage of teens that make the choice to cross the line that separates normal adolescent development type of experimentation behavior as an assertion of independence to that of engaging in serious risk taking activities.  Often, teenagers move through the world under the veil of their personal fable, which erroneously conveys to them a sense of invincibility.   According to the book, Adolescent Risk Behaviors, written by Drs. David Wolfe, Peter Jaffe, and Claire Crooks, the most common risk taking behaviors adolescents typically engage in are: the use and abuse of alcohol and drugs, school failure and dropping out, delinquency, crime, violence, and unsafe sexual practices. All of these behaviors could potentially impact the future mental and physical life of the teens, and some are dangerous enough to be life threatening.

     The authors examine the development of risk taking behaviors in the lives of adolescents and the connection between these behaviors and the influence of peer and family relationships in addition to physical, cognitive, and emotional factors. The strongest influence in determining on which side of the risk taking behavior scale the teens will fall appears to be the quality of relationship and sense of connection they feel with their school, family, peers, and community. It has been determined that risk taking behaviors almost always occur in the context of a relationship. The relationships are made up of interactions that shape the teens’ attitudes and provide a base from which they learn to make either safe or risk taking behaviors.

A recent advance in how adolescent risk taking behavior is understood is evidenced in the conclusion that many risk behaviors are interconnected, directly contradicting the previous understanding of adolescent behavior, which was that each risk taking behavior issue was independent of every other.  A possible strategy for reduction and prevention of teen high risk taking behavior is offered in the book, Adolescent Risk Behaviors.  The authors assert that while there have long been government and social agencies assigned to provide programs for at risk adolescents, due to funding and mandate[s], the agencies are often limited to addressing one risk taking behavior issue, pulling the focus from youth as a whole, to instead be more problem focused.  The proposed inclusive approach would provide the teens with knowledge about the dynamics of healthy relationships, provide them with growth opportunities, help them understand life’s challenges, responsibilities and how to develop the necessary skills to be successful in life. This approach would empower them in turn making them less vulnerable to, or accepting of the non-healthy examples of risk taking behavior they come into contact with daily.  While I agree that the authors’ plan is a very good idea, I don’t have the time to wait or help organize a program to be implemented in our community. My personal plan on how to keep, or at least minimize my teen from engaging in risk taking behavior, is simply to invest time into our relationship, spending much of that time talking with about her future life, helping her set and work toward achieving goals, encouraging her to stay on a positive track. Wish me luck!

Socilogy Research Post

The first thing that comes to mind when I hear the words, “common sense” is the American colloquialism regarding assumptions, “When you assume something, you make an ASS-of U &-ME.”  The validity of this saying is what makes it commonplace, as it is not only unwise to make assumptions, it is also unjust. I view the reliance upon common sense information in relation to the field of sociology, as similar to that of assumptions.  Common sense can be defined as, a form of knowledge not based on formal investigation, but instead, knowledge gained by ideas taken from our social circle mixed with abstractions from our own life experiences.   Though at times common sense information is true, many times it is also inaccurate, since one individual’s common sense is not necessarily the same as another’s, evidencing the issue of inadequacy as it applies to common sense.  The better way to verify information is by performing a method of sociological research to test the validity and accuracy of the information or ideas. 

According to society rape is a medicalized social problem, suggesting that rapists are psychologically damaged, and thus unable to control their behavior. I believe this illustrates the faulty use of “common sense”.  The assumption that rape is a medicalized social problem is in direct contradiction to empirical evidence that links sexual aggression to environmental variables, indicating it is learned behavior and not due to psychopathology. Additionally,  it has been determined that there is no consistent pattern to discriminate rapists from other groups of men, and the statistical frequency of rape  makes it doubtful that the act is committed by only a small psycho-pathological subset of society. In order to answer the question of why men rape, it is necessary to pose another question, “what do men gain from the act of rape?”  The overarching reason for why men rape, appears to be the cultural promotion of sexual aggression as rewarding. Additional motivators or factors have proved to be; revenge, punishment, domination, control and even male camaraderie, as is the case in gang rape scenarios.  In some instances of rape victims are viewed not as an individual person, but instead are objectified as commodities, or seen as a category representative of all women, all of whom are deserving of punishment.  Conversely, victims are also used as substitutes for a specific woman in the rapist’s life on whom he wishes to enact revenge.  In the case of “date rape” what the rapist gains is conquest of what was not offered, to him a justifiable means of compensation.  Sexual access has also been determined a factor in why men rape.  Victims are deliberately chosen due to the belief that in “normal” circumstances the victim, being of higher status, would not be attracted to him, as is the case of some interracial rapes, also a sad reflection of our society’s contemporary racism.   Rapists have described the violations they perpetrate against women as having a positive impact on their own feelings, likely due to the success of domination and control of the victim. Scully and Marola end their article re-framing the original question to instead ask men who do not rape, why they don’t.  Personally, I believe men that do not rape, probably do not find sexual aggression exciting, and also likely have a strong respect for women in general, possibly due to a good maternal, or other female authority relationship, and the benefit of growing up with healthy male role modeling.

Of the six types of sociological research methods, those that would most appeal to me personally are secondary analysis and experimental research.  Secondary analysis involves using data from previous research conducted by other sociologists, and studying it for correlative aspects. This method of research seems like the researcher starts out with an advantage, much of the work has already been done.  The second method, experimentation, is very rare for sociologists to use, due to the possibility of harm to subjects, and the general desired focus of sociology lying in broad features of society.  Experimentation research is conducted for the purpose of identifying cause and effect relationships. In order to measure the occurrence of change, before starting the experiment the researcher must measure the dependant variable, and again after the introduction of the independent variable. The experimentation process involves the division of the subject population into two groups, the experimental group, which is to be introduced to independent variables, those factors that are changed, and the control group, which is not to be exposed to the independent variables.   This research method answers the experiment hypothesis statement by studying the cause and effect relationships.  Changes (the effect of the relationship) in the dependent variable, those factors that are changed, are due to what the experimental group was introduced to, the independent variable, (the cause of the change).