Anti-Social Attitude, Relationships with Parents, and Aggressive Behaviors Across Age Groups Among Immigrant Adolescents: A Conditional Process Analysis

Background and Purpose
Adolescence is a period of identity confusion requiring a stable environment and adequate parental support. Aggression and antisocial behavioral problems may be influenced by family characteristics, with parental involvement and engagement being a protective buffer against problem behaviors. Although prevailing theories of antisocial attitude and aggressive behavior emphasize child developmental problems, few studies have examined childhood behavior from early childhood to older adolescence. Also, research is scant on how parental relationship explains the effect of anti-social attitude on aggressive behavior. To help in our understanding of problem behaviors among adolescents and their relationship with parents, this study uses conditional process analysis to test a moderated mediation model using immigrant adolescents’ data.

Methods
The study used a cross-sectional survey design. Data were collected from a sample of 182 immigrant Hispanic adolescents in the Southwestern United States in 2014. Over half of the participants were male (54.9%).  Aggression was measured using 11 items on a 6-point Likert scale (α = 91.2). Antisocial Attitudes were measured with 4 items on a 3-point Likert scale (α = 95.6). Relationship with mother and father were each measured by one item. Conditional process analysis (using the macro PROCESS; Hayes, 2013) tested the indirect effect of anti-social attitude on aggressive behavior through relationship with parent across different levels of age groups. This analysis also uses bootstrapping, which is emphasized in newer approaches to test indirect effects, including moderating and mediating effects.

Results
These results showed that the indirect effect of anti-social attitude on aggressive behavior through relationship with mother was significant for younger and middle aged adolescents, but not significant for older aged adolescents. The direct effect demonstrated that higher scores for anti-social attitude were associated with higher levels of aggressive behavior for both younger and older adolescents. Also, the indirect effects from the bootstrapping showed that for the younger adolescents (below the age of 13), relationship with mother played a significant mediating role in the effect of anti-social attitude on aggressive behavior, but for the older adolescents (the age of 13 or over), the indirect effect of anti-social attitude on aggressive behavior was not significant. However, the moderated mediation model was not significant for relationship with father.

Conclusions and Implications
Findings support a hypothesized moderated mediation relationship and suggest that improving adolescents’ relationship with their mother may be important in reducing aggressive behavior. Specifically, younger immigrant adolescents’ relationship with their mother appears to be more meaningful in mitigating problem behavior than for older immigrant adolescents. Interventions designed to reduce anti-social attitude through improving adolescents’ relationship with their parents, and thereby reduce aggressive behaviors, may have strong positive effects on overall behavioral health problems among immigrant adolescents. Furthermore, our findings offer emerging evidence about how the effects of anti-social attitudes and parental relationships may vary across different age groups. There is likelihood to consider that antisocial attitude operates differently across age groups. Interventions that carefully consider variations in age, may be most effective at reducing antisocial attitude and aggressive behaviors.