| The first phase of this study was to further refine the Family Justice Inventory-Youth Form (FJI-Y) thereby creating comprehensive conceptually integrated measures of procedural and distributive justice for adolescents within the family context. Subsequently, these measures were used to investigate the relationship of adolescents' justice appraisals of family conflict resolution strategies to family (i.e., family cohesion, family conflict) and individual (i.e., psychological well-being, psychological distress, and deviant behavior) functioning. Finally, male and female adolescents' justice appraisals were compared. A sample of 165 adolescents (ages 11--18) who attended regular education schools in northern Florida completed the FJI-Y. Factor analysis revealed that the items comprising nine procedural justice domains (accuracy, consistency, correction, neutrality, personal respect, process control, standing, trust, and voice) could be reduced to five interpretable procedural justice constructs (Process Control, Neutrality, Personal Respect, Status Recognition, Correction ). Four interpretable distributive justice factors emerged ( Equality, Decision Control, Need, Equity) from the items comprising four distributive justice domains (equality, decision control, need, equity). Using procedural justice factor scores in regression analyses, Neutrality, Personal Respect, and Status Recognition were predictors of family conflict, family cohesion, adolescents' psychological well-being and adolescents' psychological distress, whereas none of the procedural justice factors predicted deviant behavior. Using distributive justice factor scores in regression analyses, Equality predicted all of the outcome measures for family and individual functioning. As predicted, when both procedural and distributive justice factor scores were combined in regression analyses, only the procedural justice criteria accounted for unique variance in family and individual functioning. Finally, when comparing male and female participants, females valued more procedural justice criteria than the males. Furthermore, both males and females valued justice criteria that foster relationships. This study supports the need for a comprehensive conceptually integrated approach to procedural and distributive justice. |
