Risk-taking Behaviors among Adolescents: the Strategies to Prediction Crimes Commitment

Adolescents take risky behaviors from early through middle of the per-iod which significantly drops by the late adolescence. A random selected sample of 1204 students completed Risk-taking Scale measuring 7 risky behaviors such as violation, smoking, drug use, alcohol drinking, and sexual relations. In addition, School Con-nection Questionnaire and FACES-III were used. Results indicated that perceived fa-mily cohesion was correlated with decreased risky behaviors, and perc-eived family adaptability in boys was significantly associated with increased violence and substance use. Those adolescents who perceived their par-ents as authoritative had a lower risk-taking and those who perceived their parents as neglectful or permissive were found to engage in risky behaviors more frequently. The adol-escent's perception of the parents demanding behaviors, as associated with authoritative style parenting, was found to be a strong predictor of the risky behaviors. Mother’s high edu-cation and family economic well-being are significantly associated with permissive mother’s parenting which may be associated with high risk behaviors increase.