Pride and prejudice in high school gang members

Adolescence, Summer, 1994 by Alvin Y. Wang

One final issue was addressed in the present study. Because several measures were collected from gang members and their nongang peers, it was possible to determine which factors might best predict gang membership (Rosenberg & Rosenberg, 1978). Specifically, by treating gang membership as a dependent variable in a regression solution, the present study would be able to assess the degree to which various factors (e.g., self-esteem, racial attitudes, ethnicity, number and type of role models) contribute to membership in a gang.

METHOD

Subjects

All of the subjects (N = 155) were 11th- and 12th-grade students attending two public high schools located in the suburbs surrounding Orlando, Florida. Both schools enroll comparable numbers of African-American students (35% and 38%). The gang members were identified by teachers and counselors in Beeline High School (a fictitious name was supplied here at the request of school administrators) as students who were referred to a new school program ("Project Redirect") designed to foster social skills, coping strategies, and adaptive problem solving in teenagers. The criteria used for identifying these teenagers were that they either belonged to a gang and/or evidenced a prior history of school demerits based on interracial conflict (i.e., in-school fighting and acting-out). The gangs in Beeline High School were formed along racial lines (either Caucasian or African-American).

Because Beeline school administrators were willing to allow testing only of Project Redirect students, it was necessary to obtain "nongang" student data from another comparable school. Therefore, five classes representing a broad range of academic achievement levels were obtained from Sanford High School. These classes included one remedial class and another four classes randomly selected from the regular school curriculum. For purposes of gang versus nongang comparisons, the data from the five nongang classes were combined, thereby yielding a fairly large, representative sample of 11th and 12th graders who were not members of gangs. At the time of data collection there was no evidence of any gang activity at Sanford High School according to teachers and the school principal.

Materials and Procedure

The questionnaires were administered in classes of about 25 students each. Students were given a pamphlet containing four sheets of paper stapled in the following order: cover sheet, self-esteem scale, Racial Attitude Adjective Checklist (RAAC) for Caucasians, and RAAC for African-Americans. The cover requested information concerning the student's age, gender, and race. In order to obtain the names of each student's self-professed role models, an additional question asked students to "please name three people you most admire." Students completed the questionnaires on an individual basis and were instructed not to discuss their responses with anyone else during this time. A total of about 50 minutes was required to collect the data from each class.

The self-esteem scale (Group Dynamics and Strategy Training, Inc.) was chosen for use by Beeline School administrators as a means of evaluating students referred to Project Redirect. This self-report scale was comprised of 25 statements describing both positive (e.g., "I normally anticipate new endeavors with a positive expectancy and confidence") and negative feelings of self-esteem (e.g., "I am very concerned about what others think of me"). The thirteen even-numbered statements were positive, and the twelve odd-numbered statements expressed negative feelings of self-esteem. Students responded to each of the statements using a 4-point, Likert-type scale to indicate how well each statement described them (from 0 = not true to 3 = true). Three scores were computed from this scale: positive self-esteem, negative self-esteem, and overall self-esteem (positive minus negative score). A pilot study involving 38 high school students indicated that the positive and negative self-esteem statements had average Chronbach's alphas of .56 and .73, respectively. The test-retest reliability for overall self-esteem scores after two months was r(36) = .73.