Social and individual antecedents of adolescent-onset conduct problem behaviour

This chapter examines the developmental patterns of Dutch adolescents' conduct problem involvement. Clinical diagnoses of conduct disorder refer to the most severe cases but will not apply to the large group of children and adolescents who infrequently or for a short amount of time engage in minor forms of conduct problem behaviour. Developmental patterns of conduct problems, criminal involvement, delinquency and similar concepts are often examined with semiparametric and growth mixture modelling techniques. Beginning with factors most proximal to the adolescent, the chapter examines the roles of gender, pubertal development and temperament in distinguishing adolescent-onset conduct problems from persistent high and stable low trajectories. Several studies have identified risk factors for the early-onset (life-course) persistent (EOP/LCP) trajectory but less is known about distinct antecedents of conduct problems that are specific to the adolescent-limited/adolescent-onset (AL/AO) trajectory. Thus, the key objective of this study was to examine previously studied individual, social and demographic risk factors as predictors of the AL/AO trajectory.