Empirical Validation of Adolescent Status Offenses: Focusing on the Mediating Effect of Depression

The main purpose of this study was to determine how school factors outside the home and parental factors inside the home, which are representative personal environmental factors of Korean adolescents, affect adolescent status offenses. In particular, this study analyzed whether school and parental factors directly affect adolescent status behavior or indirectly affect it by mediating depression, and whether the direct or indirect effects of the independent variables are greater. The analysis used data from the 2021 Mental Health Survey of Teenagers conducted by the Korea Youth Policy Research Institute as secondary data. The results of the structural model analysis showed that adolescents who were not well adjusted in school or experienced parental abuse at home were more likely to be depressed and more likely to smoke, drink, truancy, and run away to relieve their depression. In addition, adolescents who were not interested in school, did not trust teachers, or did not follow school rules were more likely to directly commit status offenses, and adolescents who were abused by their parents at home were more likely to directly commit status offenses than those who were not abused by their parents. This study has important academic significance because it empirically validates the mechanisms by which school and parental factors influence adolescent status delinquency, two of the most influential personal environmental factors on adolescent mental health.