Abstract
A sample of 1,623 Japanese junior high school students participated in a questionnaire survey about delinquency. The study first examined regulatory factors including association with deviant peers, child-parent relationships, peer relationships, and self-control. Association with deviant peers was a strong regulatory factor for students' committing of mild delinquency, and regulatory factors also differed according to grade level and gender. The data also indicated that child-parent relationships had a strong influence on children early in junior high school, while self-control came to have a stronger influence in the upper grades. Association with deviant peers was a strong predictor of delinquency, and preventive factors were examined by classifying participants according to whether or not they associated with friends committing mild delinquency. This comparison showed that greater self-control and more intimate child-parent relationships functioned as preventive factors for children who did not commit mild delinquency, despite their association with delinquent peers.
