Thesis advisor: Thanh V. Tran / It has been well documented that El Salvador faces tremendous challenges in terms of youth involvement in problem behavior. It has also been observed that spirituality and religiosity are important factors in the lives of many Salvadoran youth. While scholarship in developed nations among adolescents and young adults has consistently found spirituality and religiosity to be protective factors against delinquency, violence, and substance abuse, few studies have systematically examined the relationships between these concepts in the Salvadoran context. The principal purpose of this dissertation is to examine the direct and mediated relationships between spirituality, religiosity, and problem behavior among high-risk and gang-involved youth in San Salvador, El Salvador. Structured interviews were conducted with 301 high-risk youth and gang members (81.6% male) between the ages of 11 and 25 (M age = 18.5, SD = 3.3) living in marginalized Salvadoran neighborhoods. Drawing from the Social Development Model, it was hypothesized that higher levels of spirituality and religiosity, as mediated by antisocial bonding and antisocial beliefs, would be associated with lower levels of participation in delinquency, violence, and substance use and abuse. Structural equation modeling, as well as logistic and multiple regression analyses, were employed to examine the direct and mediated associations between these variables. The results of this dissertation indicate that spirituality and, to a lesser degree, religiosity are of relevance to the behavior of Salvadoran high-risk and gang-involved youth. In examining the relationship of spirituality and religiosity to social developmental factors of relevance to problem behaviors, it is evident that spirituality has implications across the board in terms of setting in motion dynamics that are associated with youth involvement in problem behaviors. While not associated with minor forms of problem behavior, religiosity was found to be protective against several severe manifestations of problem behavior. Findings from this dissertation have several implications for social work research and practice. These implications relate to the salience of spirituality and religiosity as protective factors in the Salvadoran context, the differential impact of spirituality and religiosity on problem behavior involvement, and the identification of factors that mediate the relationship between spirituality, religiosity, and problem behavior. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Social Work. / Discipline: Social Work.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BOSTON/oai:dlib.bc.edu:bc-ir_102006 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Salas-Wright, Christopher Patrick |
| Publisher | Boston College |
| Source Sets | Boston College |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, thesis |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf |
| Rights | Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. |
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