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Delinquent Juvenile Behavior In order to formulate a model for developmental pathways in disruptive and delinquent behavior, it is first necessary to identify the basic dimension(s) of those behaviors. To minimize the guesswork of this selection process, Loeber and Schmaling (1985) conducted a meta-analysis of the findings from 28 previous studies of parent or teacher ratings of disruptive child behaviors. The researchers produced a multidimensional scale of disruptive behavior, with overt behavior on one pole (e.g., temper tantrums and attacks on people), covert behavior on the other pole (e.g., theft and firesetting), and disobedience (e.g., authority conflict) situated in the middle of this scale. More recently, researchers (Frick et al., 1993) repeated the meta-analysis on an expanded number of 44 published studies involving 28,400 children and adolescents of both genders. The researchers incorporated into this meta-analysis the findings for 60 different factor analyses on child and adolescent problem behaviors using ratings by parents or teachers. The results shown in figure 3 basically replicated those reported by Loeber and Schmaling in 1985, with one difference -- a destructive-nondestructive dimension of problem behavior was also extracted. In figure 3, the distance between points on the matrix signifies the extent to which different behaviors correlate, or go together. That is, closely positioned behaviors (such as running away and truancy) tend to go together very often, whereas behaviors that are distant (such as running away and assault) tend to go together far less often.  This work was instrumental in advancing an understanding of how certain disruptive behaviors might be clustered in three conceptually similar groupings: overt, covert, and authority conflict. These clusters later served as the theoretical basis for proposing three developmental pathways, which will be discussed later. Property violations, shown in the upper left quadrant, are considered part of the covert pathway. Aggression, shown in the upper right quadrant, is considered part of the overt pathway. These overt and covert behaviors are placed higher on the destructive axis, because they result in personal harm or property loss or damage. The authority conflict pathway encompasses status violations and oppositional behaviors under the horizontal axis, which represents disruptive behaviors that do not inflict the same degree of harm or distress on others as aggression and property violations.
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