"A Test of Competing Pathways to Young Adulthood Violence"

Megan Steele is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of
Georgia. Her primary research interests include the Family, Life Course, and Aging; Crime,
Law, and Deviance; and Advanced Quantitative Methods. Her dissertation is tentatively titled,
“A Test of Competing Pathways to Young Adulthood Violence.” In this work, she examines
how factors associated with six theories of criminal behavior relate to intimate partner
violence (IPV) and violent crime among a sample of 512 Black young adults. Specifically, she
tests mediators connected to social learning, social control, self-control, general strain, social
information processing, and feminist pathways theories. While past research has provided
support for all of these theories, few studies have assessed the relative contribution of each
while controlling for the processes proposed by the others. Longitudinal analyses using path
modeling revealed men’s violence was significantly related to mechanisms associated with
general strain and social control theories, while findings among women showed support for
social learning, feminist pathways, and general strain theories. Implications for future
research, prevention, and intervention will be discussed.