The Relationship Between Moral Disengagement and School Disengagement among Court-involved Yout

The purpose of the current study was to examine relationships between factors of school disengagement (SD) and moral disengagement (MD) utilizing archival data collected from court-involved youth engaged in an alternative-to-detention program in Chicago, IL. Both SD and MD signify a general turning away from social conventions. Research has shown a positive correlation between SD and juvenile delinquency and MD and juvenile delinquency. However, there is no known empirical research that examines the relationship between SD and MD among court-involved youth. The sample ranged in age from 12 to 17 years old and was primarily African-American. It was expected that there would be a positive correlation between SD and MD, a negative correlation between WRAT-IV scores and SD, the behavioral domain of SD would predict MD, and youth with a positive attitude about the future would have lower MD scores. These hypotheses revealed no significant findings; however, further analysis revealed a moderate positive correlation between MD and cognitive school disengagement (e.g., passing grades, studying). The findings from the current study suggest that there needs to be a better understanding of and interventions addressing conditions or factors that are altering youth's views about education such that they are not seeing education as an investment or pathway to success.