J Youth Adolescence (2012) 41:499–514
DOI 10.1007/s10964-011-9674-2
EMPIRICAL RESEARCH
School Belonging and School Misconduct: The Differing Role
of Teacher and Peer Attachment
Jannick Demanet • Mieke Van Houtte
Received: 25 February 2011 / Accepted: 3 May 2011 / Published online: 13 May 2011
Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011
Abstract The schools-as-communities perspective pro-
vides a popular explanation for school-disruptive behavior,
stating that interpersonal bonding at school and feelings of
school belonging prevent misconduct. In this article, we
build on this perspective in three ways. First, we test
whether the preventive influence of school belonging acts
at the individual or school level. Secondly, we test whether
a distinction should be made between the different actors
with whom students bond at school, by assessing whether
perceived teacher support, school belonging, and peer
attachment relate differently to school misconduct. Lastly,
the present study investigates whether the associations of
bonding with teachers, peers and the school with school
misconduct differ by socio-ethnic school context. Multi-
level analyses were performed on data from the Flemish
Educational Assessment. The sample consisted of 11,872
students (51.4% female) in 85 schools, most of whom were
natives (88.8%), with immigrants (11.2%) mostly having
Turkish or Moroccan backgrounds (both about 30% of
immigrants in the sample), and others Southern-European
(16%), Eastern-European (8%), North-African (5%), or
other (17%) backgrounds. Results showed that the stu-
dents’ individual feelings of bonding with peers, teachers
and school associate with school misconduct, rather than
the overall school cohesion. Results further showed that,
while higher perceived teacher support and school
belonging related to less school misconduct, higher peer
attachment was associated with higher rates of school
J. Demanet (&)
M. Van Houtte
Department of Sociology, Research Team CuDOS, Ghent
University, Korte Meer 3-5, 9000 Ghent, Belgium
e-mail: jannick.demanet@ugent.be
M. Van Houtte
e-mail: mieke.vanhoutte@ugent.be
misconduct. No differences were found by socio-ethnic
context. Implications are discussed.
Keywords Schools-as-communities perspective
School
misconduct
Peer attachment
Teacher support
School
belonging
School composition
Introduction
A recurrent theme within educational and adolescent
research is the explanation of school misbehavior (e.g.
Freidenfelt Liljeberg et al. 2011). A popular explanation
revolves around the schools-as-communities perspective
(Battistich et al. 1995), a broad line of inquiry advocating
that schools should be organized as caring school com-
munities. In such caring communities, students feel emo-
tionally connected to their peers, teachers, and school,
which, among other beneficial outcomes, fosters less
school misconduct in students (Battistich and Hom 1997).
However, researchers are still unsure whether the pre-
ventive effects of belonging act at the individual or the
school level. While some scholars state that the beneficial
effects of school belonging result from students’ personal
feelings (Wehlage et al. 1990; Goodenow 1993), others
hold that, in order to combat school deviancy, efforts
should be made to establish cohesion between actors at the
school level (Bryk and Driscoll 1988; Battistich et al.
1995). However, few studies have tested specifically
whether the effects of school belonging act at the indi-
vidual or the school level. Therefore, the first aim of this
study is to assess the relative contribution of feelings of
belonging at the school level—that is school cohesion—
and at the individual level in preventing school
misconduct.
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Researchers from the schools-as-communities perspec-
tive also state that attachment to different actors at school
and the school itself impedes school deviancy. However,
while studies have established that feelings of school
belonging (Dornbusch et al. 2001) and teacher attachment
(Freidenfelt Liljeberg et al. 2011) are associated with lower
rates of deviant behavior, research in this tradition has yet
to investigate whether attachment to peers is related in the
same way to school misconduct. The schools-as-commu-
nities perspective currently draws, in regard to its expec-
tations concerning deviancy, on insights from early social
control theory (Hirschi 1969), a theoretical approach that
expects all strong social bonds to prevent delinquency.
However, this theoretical approach failed to address the
role of deviant peer influences (Erickson et al. 2000). In
fact, research shows that peers can cause each other to
break school rules, especially in the case of cohesive
friendship bonds between deviant peers (Kandel 1978;
Wellman and Frank 2001; Espelage et al. 2003). It is
important to consider these different sources of attach-
ment—school, teachers, and peers—together, to gain
insight in the unique role played by each in preventing or
promoting school misconduct. The few studies that have
incorporated both teachers and peers as sources of support
relate this to achievement (Klem and Connell 2004),
smoking (Karcher and Finn 2005), and other health-risk
behaviors (McNeely and Falci 2004). These find higher
teacher support to advance achievement and impede
health-risk behaviors, and higher peer support to yield a
higher likelihood of smoking and engaging in other health-
risk behavior. In our study, a specific aim is to incorporate
peer attachment, teacher support and general school
belonging and test their relative contribution to school
deviancy. Contrary to earlier studies on school deviancy,
which deal with student delinquency (e.g. Crosnoe 2002),
we focus on school misconduct, a minor form of deviancy,
consisting of rule-breaking behavior such as cheating on
tests, skipping lessons, and arriving late at school (e.g.,
Stewart 2003; Demanet and Van Houtte 2011), as we can
imagine that peer and teacher attachment is more likely to
influence minor forms of rule-breaking behavior than
delinquency at school. Hence, we operationalize feelings of
school belonging multi-dimensionally, discerning three
aspects—general school belonging, peer attachment and
perceived teacher support—to test whether these three
dimensions relate differently to school misconduct.
In a third contribution to the schools-as-communities
perspective, we embed all this within the social context of
schools. Researchers state that receiving support prevents
school deviancy even more effectively in disadvantaged
schools (Battistich et al. 1995), but evidence concerning
this is mixed. In the current study, we focus on two
indicators of disadvantage in schools, namely the
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J Youth Adolescence (2012) 41:499–514
Socioeconomic Status (SES) composition and the ethnic
composition (Demanet and Van Houtte 2011). Hence, our
third research question is whether the relationships
between general school belonging, peer attachment and
perceived teacher support are stronger in schools with a
lower SES composition, and schools where immigrants are
overrepresented. As such, our study tries to find evidence
for a long-held claim that supporting students in disad-
vantaged schools has even more beneficial effects, because
these students often lack such sources of support outside
the school context.
The Schools-As-Communities Perspective
The schools-as-communities perspective is a popular
viewpoint in educational research. Barber and Olsen (1997)
emphasized three aspects of adolescent socialization:
connection to significant others, regulation of behavior,
and psychological autonomy. The schools-as-communities
perspective focuses on the first, stating that schools fulfill
their socialization function best when organized as caring
communities (Battistich et al. 1995). Such school com-
munities are defined in diverging ways, but scholars put
forward common elements (see Battistich et al. 1997,
p. 137). Broadly stated, communal schools make students
feel emotionally connected to one another—i.e., they feel
attached (see Libbey 2004, p. 274)—and feel respected and
helped by their peers and teachers—in other words, they
perceive themselves as supported (see Libbey 2004,
p. 281). In communal schools, students are made to feel at
home at school. Furthermore, students in caring school
communities feel that they make important contributions:
hence, they are given a certain amount of influence in the
school’s activities and decision-making process. Lastly, in
such schools, there is some sort of common value system
(Battistich et al. 1997). Communal schools yield a wide
array of positive effects in their students, including higher
school enjoyment, academic achievement, and less school
disruption (Battistich et al. 1995; Battistich and Hom
1997).
The preventive effect of school bonding on deviancy has
been replicated by many studies. Dornbusch et al. (2001)
showed in a longitudinal study that school attachment
reduces the overall frequency, prevalence, and initiation of
deviant involvement, and that this association held across
males and females, different community contexts and
regardless of ethnic groups. Another longitudinal study
distinguished between three forms of student engagement
at school—emotional, behavioral, and cognitive engage-
ment—confirming that emotional engagement had strong
preventive effects on the occurrence of delinquency (Hir-
schfield and Gasper 2011). In an influential study, Finn
(1989) proposed the participation-identification model,
J Youth Adolescence (2012) 41:499–514
which highlights the role of identification with and par-
ticipation in school in preventing school dropout, and, as
dropout is linked to other problem behavior (see Finn 1989,
p. 118), also school misconduct. The preventive effect of
establishing strong social and emotional connections at
school on student deviancy is thus well-established in
research.
There is some confusion as to whether the effects of
belonging should be seen as resulting from students’ per-
sonal feelings—an individual-level effect (Wehlage et al.
1990; Goodenow 1993)—or as an effect of the school—a
group-level effect (Bryk and Driscoll 1988; Battistich et al.
1995). The first position argues that misconduct is an
individual reaction to a lack of belonging, hence, efforts
should be directed at making disruptive students feel sup-
ported at school. The second view considers communality
to be a group level concept, albeit with roots in individual
feelings (Battistich et al. 1995). This side states that stu-
dents have basic needs for belonging that the school should
be equipped to fulfill, making misconduct a failure of the
school. However, few researchers have tested specifically
whether the preventive effect of feelings of school
belonging on students’ deviancy is due to students’ per-
sonal feelings of belonging or their being part of a school
that has a certain level of communality. Some studies have
shown that it is important to account for the multilevel
nature of belonging at school. One study finds that the
quality of teacher-student relationships in a school can
counterbalance negative effects of the school climate—
seen as school-wide bullying—on the academic achieve-
ment of students (Konishi et al. 2010). Another study
investigated school-level influences on students’ school
belonging, finding that students’ sense of belonging differs
more within schools than between schools, and is affected
particularly by the students’ self-esteem (Ma 2003). Hence,
it could be argued that the sense of belonging is something
individual, and, thus, that trying to establish a caring school
community does little to impact students. However, no
study has investigated the relative effects of school cohe-
sion—school belonging situated at the school level—ver-
sus the individual characteristics of peer attachment,
teacher support, and general school belonging—situated at
the student level—on students’ deviancy. Thus, while the
multilevel nature of the sense of belonging has been widely
acknowledged, there is still no clear answer to whether the
effects of school belonging result from students’ personal
feelings or from the school as a whole.
The Role of Peer Attachment in Adolescence
Although the schools-as-communities perspective holds
that all strong social bonds prevent school misconduct,
there are reasons to think that peer bonds in adolescence
501
are unlikely to have the same effect. In stating that bonding
prevents disruptive behavior, the schools-as-communities
perspective echoes the premises of the earliest version of
control theory (Hirschi 1969). This theory holds that all
individuals are inclined to deviancy, but having strong
social bonds to others prevents its manifestation. Hirschi
(1969) applied his view to adolescents, asserting that they
must have strong bonds with school, parents and peers in
order to behave properly. Empirical research based on this
theory, however, has shown that this earliest version of
control theory has some important flaws (Erickson et al.
2000). Most importantly, it has neglected the characteris-
tics of the actor with whom one should bond. Applied to
peer relationships, early control theory is unable to cope
with findings that friends often share a comparable level of
deviancy (Bendixen et al. 2006). This deviance ‘‘hom-
ophily’’ (see Espelage et al. 2003) has been explained by
means of two processes: selection and influence (Kandel
1978). Deviant students tend to choose each other as
friends, but they also influence each other to commit
deviant acts (Bendixen et al. 2006). It is noteworthy that
influence occurs especially when friendship bonds with
deviant peers are quite cohesive. Deviant peer influence has
been explained by differential association theory (Suther-
land and Cressey 1978), which states that deviancy is
learned from others who support deviancy as justifiable
behavior. Therefore, having close bonds with others will
increase the chances of being deviant, that is, when these
others endorse deviancy.
It is likely that antisocial values will prevail in ado-
lescent peer groups. Research indeed shows that peer
norms in adolescence tend to favor minor forms of devi-
ancy (Moffitt 1993; Agnew 2003; Allen et al. 2005).
Authors argue that while youngsters are biologically
mature, they are not allowed to fulfill social roles with
complete adult privileges and responsibilities, creating a
maturity gap. Adolescents thus have been viewed as
endorsing deviancy as a way to show autonomy. As stu-
dents are socialized into the norms held by the majority of
their peers (Allen et al. 2005), and socialization especially
occurs in cohesive friendship relationships (Sutherland
and Cressey 1978), higher peer attachment in adolescence
can be conducive to school misconduct. In the schools-as-
communities perspective, then, it may be essential to
consider the possible deviance-yielding effect of cohesive
bonds between youngsters.
The Context of Communality Effects
Researchers suggest that bonding impedes school mis-
conduct most in disadvantaged schools (Battistich et al.
1995; Battistich and Hom 1997). This is not to say that
school misconduct is more prevalent there, only that
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supporting students in such schools makes a larger dif-
ference. This occurs because advantaged students are
likely to have sources of support outside of school (Bat-
tistich et al. 1995). For disadvantaged students, external
sources of support are less prevalent (Stanton-Salazar and
Dornbush 1995). Therefore, for them, receiving support at
school has a major impact. Testing this, Battistich et al.
(1995) confirmed that belonging had more positive effects
on school and class enjoyment in poorer schools. Battis-
tich and Hom (1997), however, showed that this does not
apply to school delinquency, as feelings of communality
were more preventive in low and moderate poverty
schools than in high poverty ones. At the neighborhood
level, scholars have found no evidence for this assertion
(Dornbusch et al. 2001). Hence, scholars have provided
mixed evidence to the claim that enhancing school
belonging should be even more beneficial in poorer
schools.
Next to poverty, a school’s concentration of different
ethnic groups also can create a disadvantaged situation in
that school. It has been shown that students achieve less in
schools with a high concentration of migrant or ethnic
minority students (Felouzis 2003; Rumberger and Palardy
2005). Moreover, teachers in those schools report job dis-
satisfaction, lower academic expectations, and more diffi-
culty establishing relationships with students (Freeman
et al. 1999). Importantly, some research has demonstrated
that these disadvantages are entirely due to the poor socio-
economic context of these schools (e.g. Rumberger and
Palardy 2005). Ultimately, students in such schools per-
ceive the school as more disadvantaged, and expect less
from their academic career (Bankston and Caldas 1996).
This is especially the case in Flanders. In present-day
Flanders, migrants and their descendants are generally
referred to as ‘‘allochthonous’’, a term pertaining to persons
residing in Belgium, regardless of their nationality, having
at least one parent or grandparent born outside West Eur-
ope, and holding a disadvantaged position in society
because of their ethnicity (Brans et al. 2004). Their situa-
tion resembles that of the black minorities in the US,
typified by Ogbu (1978) as caste-like minorities. The sec-
ond- and third-generation in particular—who were born in
Belgium—did not choose to be here. They represent a
cultural model characterized by oppositional identity, dis-
trust of society and negative perceptions of the opportunity
structure (Hermans 2004). Hence, in Flanders, most stu-
dents in ethnically concentrated schools do not perceive
upward mobility to be likely, which characterizes these
schools as disadvantaged. Hence, in line with the claim
presented above, it could be argued that supporting
students should be even more preventive of school mis-
conduct in schools where ethnic minority students are
overrepresented.
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The Current Study
The purpose of this study is to expand upon the schools-as-
communities perspective. Using a multilevel framework,
we consider three research questions. To investigate pos-
sible mediation or selection effects, we use sequential
multilevel analyses. First, as few researchers have inves-
tigated whether the effects of school belonging constitute a
group-level effect or an individual-level effect, we will test
the relative effect of school cohesion (a school character-
istic) and students’ feelings of peer attachment, perceived
teacher support and general school belonging (individual
characteristics), on school misconduct. In the analyses, we
will investigate the role of school cohesion in the first
model, to determine whether it has an effect on the
dependent variable. In a second and third model, we add
the three individual-level measures of belonging, to test
whether the school effect of cohesion is maintained. Our
second research question is whether peer attachment, per-
ceived teacher support and general school belonging relate
differently to school misconduct. Although researchers
from the schools-as-communities perspective (Battistich
et al. 1997) assume that all sources of bonding prevent
school misconduct, based on our theoretical exploration,
we expect that peer attachment is related in a different
manner to school misconduct than perceived teacher sup-
port and general school belonging are. To investigate this,
we add peer attachment in our second model, followed by
perceived teacher support and general school belonging in
the third model. As a third research question, we consider
the claim made by researchers (Battistich and Hom 1997)
that sources of support prevent school deviancy more
effectively in a disadvantaged school setting. In this regard,
we consider the schools’ SES and ethnic composition as
indicators of school disadvantage. In our models, we test
this by adding cross-level interaction effects between the
three bonding measures and SES and ethnic composition in
our fourth model. This enables us to test whether the
relationships between peer attachment, perceived teacher
support, general school belonging, and school misconduct
vary by the SES and the ethnic composition of the schools.
Methods
Sample
The data were part of the FlEA (Flemish Educational
Assessment), gathered in the 2004–2005 school year in
Flemish secondary schools. Our sample consisted of
11,872 students across 85 Flemish schools. Flanders is the
northern, Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, and constitutes
a political entity with its own parliament and government.
J Youth Adolescence (2012) 41:499–514 503

Since 1988, the Flemish government has gained the juris-
diction to implement and govern its own educational sys-
tem, which limits the study to the students and schools in
this region. Of the respondents in the sample, 51.20%
attended the third grade, and 48.8% the fifth grade (cor-
responding to grades 9 and 11 in the US system). Hence,
the majority of students are 15 (34.8%) or 17 (32.6%) years
old, with other students being a bit older than most students
in their grade, mostly due to being held back a grade
because they did not succeed in a previous year (11.3%
being 16 years old; 14.3% 18 years old; 4.6% 19 years old,
and 1.4% being 20 years old). The sample was equally
divided by gender (51.4% girls; see Table 1). The majority
of respondents were natives (88.8%). Most immigrants
(11.2%) had Turkish or Moroccan backgrounds (both about
30% of immigrants in our sample), some had Southern-
European (16%), Eastern-European (8%), North-African
(5%), or other (17%) backgrounds. Family occupational
background (SES, see below) was unskilled manual labor
for 7.9% of students, specialized manual labor for 6.3%,
skilled manual labor for 6.3%, routine non-manual
employees for 11.2%, farmers and smallholders for 9.3%,
lower grade employees and administrators for 23.6%,
higher-grade administrators and executives for 17.6%, and
professionals and large proprietors for 11.5%. Most
respondents attended the general track (46.7%), with
28.5% attending the technical, 22% the vocational, and
2.7% the arts track. Schools were equally divided across
school sector (50.6% public, 49.4% private), and had an
average school size of 461.55 (SD = 285.27).
For the sampling procedure, we used multistage sam-
pling. At first, we selected proportional-to-size postal
codes, size being defined by the number of schools within
each postal code, information provided by the Educational
Department. From the 240 postal codes, we selected a
random sample of 48 codes. Because of this strategy, postal
codes of large municipalities had a greater chance of
selection. This strategy was used to capture the fact that
larger municipalities have a greater number of schools and
a greater number of migrants: we had to make sure that—in
correspondence with their overrepresentation in the Flem-
ish context—schools in larger municipalities had a higher
chance to be selected, making sure at the same time that we
selected a critical amount of schools with a majority of
migrant students. The sampling resulted in the desired
overrepresentation of larger municipalities. Consequently,
we selected all regular secondary schools in the chosen
postal codes that provided a third and fifth grade

Table 1 Descriptive statistics

Variables % Mean SD Cronbach’s alpha N
for variables: frequencies (%),
means (M), standard deviations Dependent variable
(SD), Cronbach’s alpha, and N
School misconduct 30.04 8.47 0.87 11,561
School level
Cohesion 61.24 2.81 85
Ethnic composition 16.45 21.70 85
SES composition 4.80 1.23 85
School sector
Public 50.60 85
School size 461.55 285.27 83
Student level
Peer attachment 15.81 2.76 0.74 11,554
Perceived teacher support 23.99 3.99 0.75 11,621
General school belonging 37.11 6.42 0.80 11,543
Gender
Female 51.40 11,843
Grade
Third 51.20 11,872
Ethnicity
Immigrant 11.20 11,870
SES 5.20 2.10 11,137
Parental attachment 28.32 5.61 0.83 11,722
Vocational track
Vocational 22.00 11,872
Prior achievement 69.42 9.22 10,713

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(corresponding to years 9 and 11 in the US system),
yielding a response rate of 31%. This low response rate is
due to schools in Flanders being swamped with research
requests. Schools choose the research they take part in on a
first-come, first-served basis. Analyses in which we com-
pared our sample to the Flemish school population, based
on information attained through the Flemish Educational
Department, showed that the participating schools did not
differ from those that opted out in terms of school sector,
size, curriculum, or student composition. Hence, no sys-
tematic biases occurred, and the 85 schools in the sample
are representative of the Flemish situation (Van Houtte
et al. 2005). In the participating schools, we asked all third-
and fifth-grade students present at the time of the visit to fill
out the questionnaire. All students participating in the study
did so with their parents’ consent. Students filled out the
questionnaire in class, supervised by members of the
research team and a teacher. A few students were not
present, due to absence or field trips. A total of 11,945
students completed the questionnaire, of which 11,872
(response rate: 87%) proved valid. The questionnaires were
not anonymous because we needed to couple other data
provided by the school with the students’ responses. Ulti-
mately we removed all names, so all analyses were per-
formed on anonymous data.
Measures
School Misconduct
We measured school misconduct using a scale inspired by
Stewart (2003, p. 602–604), consisting of 17 items (See
‘‘Appendix’’). Students were asked how often they com-
mitted deviant acts, such as ‘‘smoked at school,’’ ‘‘been late
for school,’’ ‘‘done drugs at school,’’ and so forth. Students
could answer using a 5-point scale, ranging from never (1)
to very often (5). Scores were summed to a scale ranging
from 17 to 85 (mean = 30.04, SD = 8.47, alpha = 0.87;
see Table 1). It has been shown that using self-reported
measures is not ideal for measuring deviant acts (Crosnoe
2002), but it nonetheless remains the most common method
of gathering such information (e.g. Stewart 2003; Gott-
fredson et al. 2005). We interpolated missing values by
item correlation substitution (Huisman 1999): a missing
item was assigned the value of the most highly correlated
item. ICS is a simple and relatively easy to implement
technique, used to handle missing responses to a scale.
Although they tend to overestimate the scale quality, pro-
cedures which use the relationships between items—such
as ICS—perform best, especially in scales with few
response options and a low percentage of missing values
(see Huisman 1999). As is common for delinquency
measures (Crosnoe 2002; Stewart 2003), the dependent
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J Youth Adolescence (2012) 41:499–514
variable was significantly skewed (1.58, SE = 0.023)
toward its lower end. Hence, we performed an overdi-
spersed Poisson model with constant exposure on the data
to account for possible non-linearity, but the same basic
picture emerged as with linear methods. Below we present
the results of the more readily interpretable linear
technique.
Bonding Measures
Before we introduce our bonding measures, a word is in
order about the use of terminology in this kind of research,
which has been lacking in clarity and consistency (for
reviews, see Libbey 2004; Barber and Schluterman 2008).
School connectedness has been designated with all kinds of
different terms, including ‘‘bonding’’, ‘‘attachment’’ and
‘‘connection’’, without clearly specifying what these terms
mean. Here, we follow the conceptualizations proposed by
Libbey (2004).
Our first measure pertains to peers. The 4 items used are:
‘‘I wish I had other friends at school’’, ‘‘My friends accept
me as I am’’, ‘‘I trust my friends at school’’ and ‘‘My
friends at school respect my feelings and ideas’’. As these
items refer to emotional feelings of connection (see Libbey
2004, p. 274), we call this peer attachment. Respondents
could answer on a five-point scale, ranging from Does not
describe me at all accurately to Describes me accurately
(1–5). Scores were summed up to a scale, ranging from 4 to
20. Our respondents had a mean of 15.81 (SD = 2.76). The
alpha for the scale was 0.74.
The measures concerning bonding to teachers and the
school context are derived from the Psychological-Sense-
of-School-Membership-scale (Goodenow 1993). This is a
scale consisting of 18 items (see Table 2), to which
respondents could answer on a five-point scale, ranging
from totally disagree to totally agree (1–5). On this scale,
we performed a Principal Component Analysis (PCA;
n = 11,872), using Varimax rotation. This resulted in four
components, one consisting of teacher or adult related
assertions, accompanied by three more general support
related items (see Table 2; items marked by T). The items
loaded with a minimum of 0.454 (item 7) and a maximum
of 0.705 (item 5). A confirmatory PCA (extracting one
component; n = 11,872) confirmed the high loadings of
these seven items on this one component (ranging from
0.472 to 0.750). Items were summed to a scale, ranging
from 7 to 35. As these items pertain to whether students
feel valued by their teachers (see Libbey 2004, p. 281), and
the scale is reported by students, we call this perceived
teacher support. Our respondents had a mean of 23.99
(SD = 3.99). The alpha was 0.75 (n = 11,612).
As the other three components derived from the PCA
pertained to whether students feel at home at school, and
J Youth Adolescence (2012) 41:499–514
Table 2 The psychological sense of school membership (PSSM)
scale (Goodenow 1993, p. 84)
Items
1. I feel like a real part of this school
2. People here notice when I’m good at something
3. It is hard for people like me to be accepted here. (reversed)
4. Other students in this school take my opinions seriously
5. Most teachers at this school are interested in me
6. Sometimes I feel as if I don’t belong here. (reversed)
7. There’s at least one adult in this school I can talk to if I have T
a problem
8. People at this school are friendly to me
9. Teachers here are not interested in people like me. (reversed) T
10. I am included in lots of activities at this school
11. I am treated with as much respect as other students
12. I feel very different from most other students here. (reversed)
13. I can really be myself at this school
14. The teachers here respect me
15. People here know I can do good work
16. I wish I were in a different school. (reversed)
17. I feel proud of belonging to this school
18. Other students here like me the way I am
each in itself does not yield a straightforward interpreta-
tion, we treated the remaining 11 items together in one
scale (see Table 2; items without T). As these items bear
on a broad notion of whether students affiliate to their
schools (see Libbey 2004, p. 278), we call this scale gen-
eral school belonging. A confirmatory PCA (extracting one
component; n = 11,872) on these eleven items revealed
factor loadings ranging from 0.387 (item 4) to 0.705 (item
6). There was one outlier with a loading of 0.298 (item 10),
but item analysis did not show a substantial improvement
of alpha when deleting this. Alpha for this scale was 0.80
(n = 11,543). The scores were summed, yielding a mini-
mum of 11 and a maximum of 55. Students had a mean of
37.11 (SD = 6.42).
Cohesion
To assess school cohesion, we aggregated the students’
individual beliefs to the school level, by calculating the
mean sense of belonging (see Goodenow 1993) in each
school (e.g. Hofstede et al. 1990). However, first, we had to
investigate whether the sense of belonging was really
shared between students of the same school. For this, we
calculated the ‘‘mean rater reliability’’ (Shrout and Fleiss
1979; Glick 1985), which is based on the intra-class cor-
relation (ICC) in a one-way ANOVA with sense of
belonging as dependent variable and schools as factor.
The ICC is calculated by the formula: (Between Mean
505
Square-Within Mean Square)/Between Mean Square, and
should be larger than 0.60 for a legitimate aggregation. For
sense of belonging, the ICC was 0.91. Schools differed
significantly on their mean level of belonging (F = 10.736;
p \ 0.001). This means that the sense of belonging is
T indeed shared between students from the same school, and
that it is legitimate to speak about cohesion at the school
level. The mean value on our cohesion measure over all
T schools was 61.24 (SD = 2.81).
Ethnicity
We assessed ethnicity using multiple questions. The prin-
cipal criterion was the birthplace of the maternal grand-
mother. If missing (1%), we considered the nationality of
T the parents, as most immigrants are second- and third-
generation citizens and have Belgian nationality. As is
common, only West European birthplaces and nationalities
T were considered as native descent (Timmerman et al.
T 2002). Additional criteria in case of missing data regarding
nationality (father: 4%, mother: 3.3%) were the language
spoken at home (other than Dutch), religion (Islam), and
the student’s name (Felouzis 2003). This resulted in a
dichotomous variable (coding: 0 = native, 1 = immi-
grant); 11.2% were immigrants.
Socioeconomic Status
The SES was measured by the occupation of the father and
mother (Erikson et al. 1979), or, if unemployed, their last
occupation (1 = Unskilled manual labor; 2 = Specialized
manual labor; 3 = Skilled manual labor; 4 = Routine non-
manual employees; 5 = Farmers and smallholders; 6 =
Lower grade employees and administrators; 7 = Higher-
grade administrators and executives; 8 = Professionals and
large proprietors). We used the highest ranked occupation as
the family SES. The mean was 5.20 (SD = 2.10).
Ethnic Composition
As is common in educational research (see Vervoort et al.
2010; Demanet and Van Houtte 2011), we measured ethnic
composition by the proportion of immigrants at school. We
asked the administrators to estimate this; however, 12
(14.12%) of the 85 administrators did not respond to this
question. This poses a problem, as multilevel analysis does
not permit missing values at the school level and using this
measure would mean we have to omit 12 schools from our
sample. However, we additionally computed the proportion
of immigrants at school using the students’ ethnicity at the
individual level (see above). The correlation of 0.88
(p \ 0.001) between the two measures validates the use of
this aggregated measure. The 85 schools in our sample
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506
cover the entire range of ethnic composition, from 0% (6
schools) to 88.20% (1 school). The mean of this measure
was 16.45 (SD = 21.70).
SES Composition
The schools’ SES composition was measured by calculat-
ing the mean SES of students (see above) per school (see
Rumberger and Palardy 2005; Demanet and Van Houtte
2011). The mean in the sample was 4.80 (SD = 1.23).
Parental Attachment
To measure parental attachment, we used a scale of 7
items, answerable on a 5-point-scale (Brutsaert 2001).
Examples of items used are ‘‘If I want to tell my parents
something, they act as if they don’t hear me’’, and ‘‘I don’t
think my parents believe I can do something good’’. Scores
on the items were summed, resulting in a scale ranging
from 7 to 35. Missing answers were imputed by item
correlation substitution (Huisman 1999). Respondents had
a mean of 28.32 (SD = 5.61). The alpha was 0.83.
Vocational Track
We also accounted for whether students attended a voca-
tional track. The Flemish school system can be categorized
as ‘‘explicit school-level tracking to different school types
catering to specific student groups’’, using achievement as
a selection criterion (Trautwein et al. 2006, p. 789). There
are four main tracks in which students can enrol: general
education, technical, vocational, and artistic education, the
latter being a rather marginal track, in terms of number of
students. The different tracks are commonly classified
hierarchically, placing vocational tracks at the lower end.
Hence, attending a vocational track in Flanders is rarely a
positive choice, and vocational students are all too aware of
their low status in society, yielding more anti-school atti-
tudes and more misconduct (for an extended discussion of
the Flemish tracking system, see Van Houtte and Stevens
2008). Moreover, immigrants in Flanders are overrepre-
sented in the vocational track. Because of all this, it was
necessary to account for this in our analyses. Among
students, 22% attended a vocational track (coding: 1 =
vocational track).
Prior Achievement
Prior achievement was measured by GPA (Grade Point
Average) from the preceding school year. To grade their
students, Flemish high-schools use a percentage, hence,
grades range from 0 to 100%, 50% being the passing grade.
123
J Youth Adolescence (2012) 41:499–514
In our data, students ranged from 41 to 100%, with a mean
of 69.42 (SD = 9.22; see Table 1), corresponding grossly
to a ‘C’ in the US high school system. This measure should
be considered carefully. As no standardized (for example,
state administered) tests exist in Flanders, it is hard to
compare measures of academic achievement across
schools. Furthermore, being self-reported, this measure
could contain biases due to memory problems and cover-up
strategies. As a result, it has a large number of missing
values (9.8%). Consequently, we entered the measure only
at the very last step.
Data Analysis
As we have a clustered sample—students nested within
schools—it is necessary to use multilevel analysis (HLM6;
Raudenbush and Bryk 2002). First, we estimated an
unconditional ‘‘null’’ model to determine school-level
variance in school misconduct. Then, we added the vari-
ables sequentially as explained above. Throughout our
analyses, we controlled for several variables at the school
and individual level. At the school level, we considered
school sector, SES composition and ethnic composition.
We should point out that there exists a high correlation
between these two latter features (r = -0.784; p \ 0.001,
See ‘‘Appendix’’). Because other studies have established
an effect of ethnic composition next to the effect of SES
composition (e.g. Eitle and Eitle 2003), we used the vari-
ables simultaneously, although the results should be
regarded with caution due to possible multicollinearity. At
the school level, it would be important to control for school
size (see Stewart 2003). However, two schools provided no
information on this variable. As multilevel analysis does
not permit missing values at the second level, and analysis
of 83 schools showed that school size exerts no influence
on school misconduct (c = 0.000; SE = 0.001; p [ 0.05),
we omitted this variable from the analyses. At the student
level, then, it is obvious to control for sociodemographic
variables such as SES, gender (coding: 1 = girl), grade
(coding: 1 = fifth grade) and ethnicity (coding: 1 =
immigrant). Furthermore, we control for parental attach-
ment (Dornbusch et al. 2001), and attending a vocational
track (coding: 1 = vocational track) (see Van Houtte and
Stevens 2008). In the last model, we controlled additionally
for prior achievement. This was done only in the last step,
because this measure was a rather crude one (see Measures
section) and had a large number of missing values. How-
ever, as prior achievement has been linked to both school
deviance and school belonging (Stewart 2003), it was
necessary to control for this. To ensure model stability, all
but the dichotomous variables were grand mean centered.
Below, we present both the unstandardized (c) and the
standardized (c*) results.
J Youth Adolescence (2012) 41:499–514
Results
From the unconditional model (see Table 3), we see that
7.1% (r2 = 67.107; s0 = 5.156; p \ 0.001) of the vari-
ance in school misconduct occurs between schools, war-
ranting the introduction of school-level determinants.
School and Individual-Level Effects of Bonding
Our first model shows that our school-measure of cohesion
has an association with school misconduct (c* = -0.044;
p \ 0.01, see Table 4). Adding the individual-level peer
attachment in the second model decreases this association
slightly, but it remains significant (c* = -0.039; p \ 0.05).
However, when perceived teacher support and general
school belonging are added (model 3), the association
between the school-measure of cohesion and school mis-
conduct vanishes (c* = 0.018; p [ 0.05). We should also
point out that the explanatory power of our four school-
level variables is limited, as our analyses suggest that they
explain 7% of school-level variance.
The Differential Effects of Peer, Teacher, and School
Bonding
Research question 2 is answered in the second and third
model. While, in the second model, peer attachment in
itself has no association with school misconduct (c* =
-0.004; p [ 0.05), entering perceived teacher support and
general school belonging in the third model reveals a
positive association of peer attachment with school mis-
conduct (c* = 0.070; p \ 0.001), although the standard-
ized coefficient shows this to be a weak association.
Perceived teacher support (c* = -0.170; p \ 0.001) and
general school belonging (c* = -0.096; p \ 0.001) are
significantly negatively related to school misconduct.
Furthermore, at the individual pupil level, gender, grade
and parental attachment hold strong associations with
Table 3 HLM unconditional model characteristics: Variation
between schools in student school misconduct
Characteristic Value
Intercept 30.180***
Parameter variance
Within school 67.107
Between schools 5.156
HLMa reliability estimate 0.862
Proportion of variance between schools 0.071***
a
HLM hierarchical linear modelling
2
v (84, N = 11,872) = 887.970
*** p B 0.001
507
school misconduct (c* [ 0.10 in model 3). Of all our
school variables, only school sector has such a strong
association with the outcome. While prior achievement
does have a significant relation to school misconduct
(c* = -0.139; p \ 0.001), including it in model 5 has no
influence on the other effects.
Differences by Social-Ethnic Context
The variance components in the third model show that
there is significant slope variation between schools for peer
attachment (ru2 = 0.058; p \ 0.05), perceived teacher
support (ru2 = 0.035; p \ 0.01) and general school
belonging (ru2 = 0.011; p = 0.053), warranting the testing
of cross-level interactions. In the fourth model, we entered
ethnic and SES school composition to account for the slope
variation of, respectively, peer attachment, perceived tea-
cher support and general school belonging. However, these
school factors did not explain the slope variation of the
bonding measures, hence no evidence was found for cross-
level interactions. To test whether this lack of significant
interaction effects could be due to the high correlation
between SES and ethnic school composition (r = -0.784;
p \ 0.001, See ‘‘Appendix’’), we additionally performed
model 4 with SES composition and ethnic composition
separately (not shown). These analyses yielded the same
results as the ones shown in Table 4.
Discussion
School deviance is a widely studied topic in adolescent
research. One of the most influential explanations for the
occurrence of school misbehavior is offered by the schools-
as-communities perspective (Battistich et al. 1995), which
states that preventing school deviancy requires that stu-
dents feel part of a caring school community and have
meaningful and supportive relationships to actors at school
(Battistich and Hom 1997). In the present study, we built
on this perspective in three ways. While most researchers
contend that feelings of belonging have important pre-
ventive effects on school misbehavior (e.g. Dornbusch
et al. 2001), opinions are divided whether efforts should be
directed at transforming the school into a community by
building cohesion between actors at the school level
(Battistich et al. 1995), or whether it is more efficient to
impact students’ personal feelings of belonging (Goode-
now 1993) in order to prevent school misconduct. While
some studies in the past have indeed pointed to the mul-
tilevel nature of the sense of belonging to school, no study
has yet investigated the relative importance of school-level
cohesion versus individual feelings of peer, teacher,
and school attachment in relation to school misconduct.
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Table 4 Association between peer attachment, perceived teacher support, and general school belonging and school misconduct. Results of
sequential multilevel analysis
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5

Intercept c 29.071*** 29.066*** 29.304*** 29.307*** 29.329***

SE 0.552 0.540 0.536 0.543 0.516
School level
Ethnic composition c 0.001 0.000 0.001 -0.004 0.015
c* 0.002 0.001 0.002 -0.010 0.038
SE 0.013 0.014 0.014 0.014 0.013
SES composition c -0.094 -0.161 -0.259 -0.292 0.055
c* -0.014 -0.023 -0.038 -0.042 0.008
SE 0.219 0.222 0.222 0.228 0.194
Public sector c 1.786*** 1.792*** 1.556*** 1.561*** 1.491***
c* 0.105*** 0.106*** 0.092*** 0.092*** 0.088***
SE 0.322 0.330 0.320 0.321 0.269
Cohesion c -0.131** -0.117* 0.055 0.060 0.048
c* -0.044** -0.039* 0.018 0.020 0.016
SE 0.049 0.052 0.062 0.062 0.057
Student level
Female gender c -3.097*** -3.035*** -2.921*** -2.924*** -2.663***
c* -0.183*** -0.179*** -0.172*** -0.173*** -0.157***
SE 0.217 0.230 0.222 0.223 0.216
SES c 0.131** 0.120** 0.145** 0.144** 0.177**
c* 0.033** 0.030** 0.036** 0.036** 0.044**
SE 0.041 0.042 0.044 0.044 0.050
Fifth grade c 1.178*** 1.160*** 1.100*** 1.101*** 0.975***
c* 0.139*** 0.137*** 0.130*** 0.130*** 0.115***
SE 0.106 0.106 0.100 0.100 0.110
Parental attachment c -0.324*** -0.327*** -0.225*** -0.226*** -0.202***
c* -0.215*** -0.216*** -0.149*** -0.149*** -0.134***
SE 0.018 0.018 0.017 0.017 0.018
Immigrant c -0.576 -0.710 -0.577 -0.550 -0.623
c* -0.021 -0.026 -0.021 -0.020 -0.023
SE 0.389 0.404 0.402 0.403 0.404
Vocational track c 1.249** 1.218** 1.056** 1.081** 1.420***
c* 0.060** 0.059** 0.051** 0.052** 0.069***
SE 0.384 0.405 0.374 0.377 0.345
Peer attachment c -0.012 0.216*** 0.210*** 0.201***
c* -0.004 0.070*** 0.069*** 0.065***
SE 0.035 0.040 0.042 0.041
Perceived teacher support c -0.361*** -0.355*** -0.315***
c* -0.170*** -0.167*** -0.149***
SE 0.032 0.034 0.036
General school belonging c -0.126*** -0.124*** -0.117***
c* -0.096*** -0.094*** -0.089***
SE 0.020 0.021 0.021
Prior achievement c -0.128***
c* -0.139***
SE 0.013

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J Youth Adolescence (2012) 41:499–514 509

Table 4 continued
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5

Interaction terms
Peer attachment*ethnic composition c -0.003 -0.002
SE 0.003 0.003
Peer attachment* SES composition c -0.029 -0.007
SE 0.044 0.045
Perceived teacher support*ethnic composition c 0.003 0.004
SE 0.003 0.003
Perceived teacher support*SES composition c 0.012 -0.003
SE 0.044 0.045
General school belonging*ethnic composition c 0.000 -0.001
SE 0.002 0.002
General school belonging* SES composition c -0.005 -0.006
SE 0.030 0.027
Variance components
Intercept U0 10.310 8.596 8.996*** 9.201*** 6.538***
Female gender U1 1.452 1.840 1.707*** 1.696*** 1.451***
SES U2 0.022 0.034 0.041 0.041 0.059
Fifth grade U3 0.339 0.349 0.297* 0.300* 0.428**
Parental attachment U4 0.011 0.010 0.009* 0.009* 0.011*
Immigrant U5 3.819 4.441 4.711** 4.834** 3.782**
Vocational track U6 3.474 4.014 3.228*** 3.224*** 2.006***
Peer attachment U8 0.036 0.058* 0.060* 0.046
Perceived teacher support U7 0.035** 0.036** 0.040**
General school belonging U9 0.011$ 0.012* 0.009
Prior achievement U10 0.008**
Model deviance 74,593.94*** 73,420.39*** 72,395.97*** 72,441.45 66,225.11***
Unstandardized (c) and standardized (c*) gamma’s are presented, with standard errors (SE), variance components U, and Model Deviance, with
significance level of the Chi-squared test comparing it to the deviance of the previous model; Model 1 is compared to the null-model
$
* p B 0.05, ** p B 0.01, *** p B 0.001; p = 0.053

Moreover, in this article, we investigated whether the
schools-as-communities perspective should distinguish
between the different actors bonded with at school.
Regarding school deviancy, the perspective currently is
based largely on early control theory (Hirschi 1969), a
theoretical approach that has neglected the characteristics
of the actor involved in the bonding. Differential associa-
tion theory (Sutherland and Cressey 1978), on the contrary,
states that closer peer relationships might generate more
deviancy if antisocial socialization occurs in the friendship
group. This is likely in adolescence, as deviancy is
accepted by a certain number of adolescents as a valid form
of behavior (Allen et al. 2005). Led by this theoretical
exploration, we expected peer attachment to relate differ-
ently to school misconduct than general school belonging
and perceived teacher support. In a third contribution to the
schools-as-communities perspective, we investigated a
long-held claim by researchers that providing students with
supportive relationships should impact those students even
more in disadvantaged school contexts (Battistich et al.
1995). However, especially in the case of deviancy, this
claim has received mixed empirical support. In the current
study, we considered the SES composition and the ethnic
composition of schools as indicators of school disadvan-
tage (Demanet and Van Houtte 2011), to investigate
whether feelings of support were indeed more strongly
related to less school misconduct in schools with a lower
mean SES and a higher proportion of minority students.
To assess the first research question, namely what the
relative importance is of school-level cohesion versus
individual feelings of belonging, we tested whether the
association of school cohesion is maintained when con-
trolling for three aspects of students’ sense of belonging—
peer attachment, perceived teacher support, and general
school belonging. We found that, in association to school
misconduct, individual bonding seems more important than
overall school cohesion, as no relation of school cohesion
is seen once the three aspects of individual belonging are

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taken into account. This finding can be explained in two
ways. First, it could be due to selection. A selection effect
is found when it is clear that school-level effects are
actually due to features of the students enrolled in the
school, and as such are not an effect over and above these
individual student effects. In this case, schools that are
cohesive are simply made up of more students with a high
sense of teacher support and general school belonging,
which is why these students report less school misconduct.
Or second, it could be due to a mediation effect: in this
case, cohesion at the school level yields a higher perceived
support received from teachers in students and a higher
sense of overall school belonging, which is responsible for
their lower school misconduct. As we have no longitudinal
design, however, we can not differentiate between the
selection or mediation explanations. Whichever is the case,
our results suggest that intervention efforts designed to
improve a school’s cohesiveness will not affect school
deviancy directly (cf. Nelson 1996). In the mediation case,
at most these efforts might create more sense of belonging
in individual students, making them less prone to school
misconduct. Therefore, creating a cohesive school may not
be a sufficient condition to combat school misconduct. Our
results suggest that, to counter school deviancy, interven-
tion efforts should focus directly on individual feelings of
school belonging. However, we should point out that, as
this is not a longitudinal study, we can not be sure about the
causal direction of these relationships.
Regarding the second research question, our results
show that, while higher school belonging and perceived
teacher support are related to less school misconduct,
greater peer attachment was associated to more school
misconduct. It is noteworthy that the association between
peer attachment and school misconduct only showed up
when we controlled for general school belonging and
perceived teacher support, meaning that both characteris-
tics buffer the relation of peer attachment with school
misconduct. This occurs because students who feel bonded
to their school and teachers generally perceive a high
degree of peer attachment as well. Students who are bon-
ded to all three sources are less deviant than others,
because the preventive effect of teacher support and school
belonging overshadows the deviance-generating effect of
their high peer attachment. However, students lacking
teacher support and school belonging miss this suppression
effect, so that the deviance-yielding effect of peer attach-
ment is free to occur. Hence, for students feeling attached
to their peers, yet lacking teacher and school bonding, more
misconduct can be expected. This concurs with earlier
research. In a recent longitudinal study, Freidenfelt Lilje-
berg et al. (2011) point to the role of teacher attachment in
preventing delinquency. Further evidence is provided by
McNeely and Falci (2004) who distinguished between
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J Youth Adolescence (2012) 41:499–514
social and teacher support. Although their measure of
social support does not specifically refer to peers, they
conclude that conventional bonds to teachers can counter-
balance unconventional peer bonds. Baker (1998, p 35)
gives a more process-oriented explanation for our results,
stating that when students fail to form meaningful con-
nections to their school and its teachers, they turn to other
youngsters to fulfill their need for belonging, subsequently
forming sub-communities within the school. It is note-
worthy that this occurs especially with disruptive students,
because teachers react more harshly to them (Good and
Brophy 1994), and they are likely to be rejected by their
prosocial peers (Salmivalli et al. 1997). As such, small,
deviant peer groups are formed in which students incite
each other to continue to break the rules (Bendixen et al.
2006).
We should, however, point to a possible alternative
explanation for our findings. As this is not a longitudinal
study, we cannot ascertain the direction of the effects. In
fact, longitudinal research shows that effects are likely to
be bidirectional (Hirschfield and Gasper 2011). Hence, it
has been shown that students who are deviant at school also
are more likely to feel less at home in the school context
and perceive disconnection from their teachers (Karcher
2002). It is also likely that deviant students tend to be
popular among their friends (see also Demanet 2008). As in
adolescence, peer norms tend to favor minor deviant acts,
students who display school misconduct are likely to be
popular (Allen et al. 2005). Rather than being determinants
of school misconduct, bonding relationships can be out-
comes of school-deviant behavior.
In response to the third research question, we found no
evidence for the claim that supportive relationships should
be related even more strongly to school misconduct in
disadvantaged schools: none of the cross-level interaction
effects were significant. This concurs with research relating
this to neighborhood disadvantage (Dornbusch et al. 2001).
A possible explanation for the lack of support found for
this claim is that having supportive relationships is not
more beneficial for all students in disadvantaged schools.
As described above, the rationale for interaction effects is
that disadvantaged students will benefit disproportionally
from school communality because they have less social
capital outside of school. Hence, this does not apply to
advantaged students in disadvantaged schools. It is possi-
ble, then, that supportive relationships are more beneficial
for disadvantaged students, whatever the school context
they enroll in, than for advantaged students.
We should note the limitations of this study and propose
some remedies to be addressed in future research. First, as
we mentioned earlier, our design was cross-sectional, so we
cannot make any causal claims. Research has established
that the association between bonding and misconduct is
J Youth Adolescence (2012) 41:499–514 511

bidirectional (e.g. Karcher 2002; Hirschfield and Gasper do propose that future studies test whether the conclusions
2011), and lacking longitudinal data, we can not ascertain in this study also apply to students in the vocational track
which direction is dominant. Furthermore, previous longi- and to immigrants.
tudinal research showed that exposure to deviant peers was In summary, our study’s main finding is that, although
not equally predictive of later problem behavior at all ages associations appear to be small, bonding with different
(Fleming et al. 2010). Hence, we call for additional lon- actors at school can have mixed connections to deviant
gitudinal research to investigate the intertwined roles of behavior. This contradicts early control theory, on which
school cohesion and individual feelings of bonding, and the schools-as-communities perspective, with reference to
link this to developmental processes. Second, our reliance school deviancy, is now largely based. Following the
upon a single informant—namely the student—for all the addition of differential association theory to the early
individual-level variables could create problems of shared version of control theory, we argue that it is vital to
method variance: because all variables are reported by the account for the characteristics of the actors with whom the
same individual, correlations could be estimated larger student bonds, and especially whether they endorse devi-
than they actually are. Moreover, self-reports are not ancy or not. It seems important to incorporate this in the
always accurate representations of actual levels of both schools-as-communities perspective. Furthermore, our
deviance (Crosnoe 2002) and bonding (Stevens et al. results support earlier findings that receiving teacher
2002). Future studies on this topic should combine reports support yields multiple positive outcomes for students,
by students, teachers, and parents to avoid these problems. including less involvement in health-risk behavior (West
Third, in this study, we did not distinguish between et al. 2004), and higher engagement and achievement
attachment to deviant or non-deviant peers because we (Klem and Connell 2004). Hence, we contribute to the
assumed that all students get socialized in the broadly held evidence base showing that schools should be organized
peer norms that school misconduct is acceptable behavior as caring communities. Adults at school play a large role
(see also Allen et al. 2005), whether their close friends in this, as they are responsible for making all students,
were deviant or not. However, our conclusion led us to even the disruptive and poor achieving ones, feel at home
hypothesize that students with less perceived teacher sup- at school.
port and general school bonding form sub-communities
within the school, in which we expected deviancy to be Acknowledgments The authors are grateful to Simon Boone, the
Editor, and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback on
endorsed. Hence, we arrive at the same conclusion as many this manuscript.
former studies (e.g. Bendixen et al. 2006), namely that
especially attachment to peers who themselves perform
deviant acts promotes school misconduct. Future research Appendix: The School Misconduct Scale (inspired
should distinguish between attachment to prosocial and by Stewart 2003, p. 602–604)
antisocial peers in order to compare their influence on
school misconduct to teacher support and general school How often have you:
belonging. Fourth, as this study used a quantitative
approach, we only could gain general information from our 1. been late for school
respondents, and had less insight into the perceptions of the 2. skipped lessons
actors in question. Future qualitative research should 3. skipped school all day
attempt to understand on a more micro level how sociali- 4. cheated on tests
zation takes place in close interactions, and how the buf- 5. copied someone’s homework
fering effect of receiving teacher support is experienced by 6. not made your homework
7. fought at school
students themselves. Lastly, we should note a small
8. stolen at school
selection bias with regard to our analytical sample. Stu-
9. committed vandalism at school
dents from the vocational track and immigrants were
10. smoked at school
overrepresented among the respondents excluded from the
11. drunk alcohol during school hours
analyses due to missing responses. However, because of
12. done drugs during school hours
the small number of missing cases, this is not likely to
13. talked back at teachers
affect our overall results. Moreover, we tried to account for
14. broke the school rules
this by controlling for the socio-demographic variables in
15. had to do impositions
question. Indeed, further analyses—in which we imputed
16. been sent to detention
all missing values by means of mean imputation—con-
17. been suspended for one or more days
firmed the conclusions of this study. Although it is not
likely that this small selection bias impacts our results, we See Tables 5 and 6.

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Table 5 Pearson product moment correlations between individual-level variables

School SES Parental Peer Perceived General school
misconduct attachment attachment teacher belonging
support

SES 0.009
Parental attachment -0.225*** -0.005
Peer attachment -0.093*** 0.085*** 0.231***
Perceived teacher support -0.281*** 0.047*** 0.312*** 0.294***
General school belonging -0.241*** 0.085*** 0.337*** 0.476*** 0.617***
GPA -0.237*** 0.079*** 0.141*** 0.075*** 0.150*** 0.141***
*** p B 0.001

Table 6 Pearson product moment correlations between school-level
variables
Ethnic composition SES composition
SES composition -0.784***
Cohesion -0.141 0.297**
** p B 0.01, *** p B 0.001
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Author Biographies
Jannick Demanet received his master in sociology in 2007. Since
then, he is assistant at the Department of Sociology, Ghent University,
and he is a member of the CuDOS research team. He is currently
preparing his Ph.D.-project, covering structural, compositional and
cultural school determinants of antischool and antisocial attitudes and
behavior. His research interests further include bullying/victimization,
and the nature and strength of students’ relations with peers, teachers,
parents, and the school.
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J Youth Adolescence (2012) 41:499–514
Mieke Van Houtte received her Ph.D. in Sociology in 2002 from
Ghent University. Currently, she is lecturer at the Department of
Sociology, Ghent University, and she is head of the CuDOS research
team. Her research interests include diverse topics within the
sociology of education, covering school effects research, education
and gender, tracking research, and topics related to antisocial school
behavior and school misconduct.