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SELF-REPORTS OF DEVIANT BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN FROM SOCIALLY EXCLUDED AREA

P. Doulik, J. Skoda

Abstract

This contribution is connected with the deviant behaviour of children from socially excluded areas in the Czech Republic between 14 -15 years of age and their self-evaluation of such inappropriate behaviour. The theoretical introductory part of the work characterises the most common social pathologic phenomena which are more frequent during puberty. Also the issues of socially excluded areas will be discussed including the social handicaps, which are overt among children from these areas. A certain amount of attention is also given towards juvenile delinquency, its causes and possible prevention of deviant behaviour. The main goal of the realised research study and its results is to verify the influence of the intervention targeted on the social skill development of children in informal education on the level of willingness to commit deviant behaviour. The intervention realised took place from October till December 2016 with a group of children (N = 32) between 14 – 15 years of age who regularly attend low-threshold facilities for children and youth in Czech Republic. During the research study the input and output diagnostics evaluated the level of self-evaluation of deviant behaviour with the use of Farrington Self-Reports of Deviant Behaviour inventory (Farrington, 1973).This data collecting tool needed to be adjusted for particular study purposes. Some elements of the original design which were designed for the American sociocultural environment had to be omitted due to the different sociocultural conditions in the Czech Republic. The study includes the level of deviant behaviour diagnostics before the targeted intervention (pretest phase) and after the intervention (post-test phase). The results were then tested by the normality distribution via Shapiro-Wilk test followed by comparison with the F-test and Student's t-statistic. The results show positive effect of the realized intervention for social skill development among children from socially excluded areas. After the intervention we noticed a significant decrease of willingness to participate in deviant behaviour in the virtual environment. It seems the development of social skills is an efficient preventive tool in relation to some types of risk behaviour among children and youth.

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