Do structural choice theory and the ‘risky lifestyles’ perspectives predict immunity as well as victimization? A test using zero-inflated mixed-effect SEM analyses of adolescent victimizations in South Korea
| Author | Melissa Rorie,Seong-min Park,Matthew P West |
| Published date | 01 September 2022 |
| Date | 01 September 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/02697580211057330 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/
International Review of Victimology
2022, Vol. 28(3) 345 –366
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/02697580211057330
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Article
Do structural choice theory
and the ‘risky lifestyles’
perspectives predict immunity
as well as victimization? A test
using zero-inflated mixed-effect
SEM analyses of adolescent
victimizations in South Korea
Melissa Rorie
University of Nevada - Las Vegas, USA
Seong-min Park
University of Nevada, USA
Matthew P West
Southern Illinois University - Carbondale, USA
Abstract
Adolescent victimization experiences can cause serious distress to victims and have been shown to
be international phenomena. While victimization in various forms tends to peak in adolescence, its
trajectories vary depending on individual and structural characteristics as well as the type of
offending. Using structural choice theory and the ‘risky lifestyles’ perspective as our framework,
the present study expanded on prior research by examining adolescent victimization in South
Korea and using sophisticated statistical models to examine the unique predictors of ‘immunity’ in
addition to victimization. In doing so, we supported previous research indicating that structural
choice theory predicts adolescent victimization, but we added to that literature in finding that
immunity was also a function of one’s environment as well as individual-level characteristics.
Keywords
Victimization, structural choice theory, immune effect, zero-inflated analysis, structural equation
modeling
Corresponding author:
Melissa Rorie, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 4505 S. Maryland Parkway, Box 5009, Las Vegas, NV 89154, USA.
Email: melissa.rorie@unlv.edu
346 International Review of Victimology 28(3)
Introduction
Adolescent victimization experiences can cause serious distress to victims, sometimes impacting
their future mental health (see Arseneault et al., 2010, for a review), socioeconomic status (Mac-
millan and Hagan, 2004), and susceptibility to victimization as adults (Ousey et al., 2008). School
victimization, in particular, has been shown to be an international phenomenon and is estimated to
impact one out of every five children worldwide (UNESCO, 2019). Recent estimates indicate that
one in three American children experiences some form of victimization during this tumultuous
time of life (Baldwin et al., 2018; Cho and Wooldredge, 2018), and studies among youth in South
Korea (SK) demonstrated that one out of eight reported some form of victimization (Cho and
Wooldredge, 2018).
Victimization in various forms tends to peak in adolescence, but its trajectories vary depending
on individual and structural characteristics as well as on the type of offending (Finkelhor et al.,
2009). Studies of adolescent victimization have employed lifestyle/routine activity and self-control
perspectives to advance our understanding of the impact of individual factors (Miethe and Meier,
1990; Miethe et al., 1990; Ousey et al., 2008; Pratt and Turanovic, 2016; Schreck et al., 2006).
Conversely, the comprehensive influence of structural attributes is relatively less well understood
in the criminological field. Furthermore, from a methodological viewpoint, prior research aims its
attention at the skewed frequencies of victimization (which are concentrated in a small portion of
the population) and fails to fully consider the large number of non-victims (Park and Fisher, 2017).
As described below, failing to account for non-victimization has the potential to ignore another
process in victimization – the possibility that some people are ‘immune’ to victimization.
Using structural choice theory (hereafter SCT) and ‘risky lifestyles’ perspectives as our frame-
work, the present study expands on prior research by examining adolescent victimizations in SK
through constructing a comprehensive structural equation model (SEM), which incorporates
both individual and structural factors. To advance methodological rigor, this study employs the
zero-inflated approach and explores how an ‘immunity effect’ impacts traditional explanations
predicting victimization likelihood. Prior to describing our study, we review research and literature
on predictors of victimization, repeat victimization, and the immunity effect.
Literature review
Research over the last two decades demonstrates that adolescent victimization is a serious problem
in the United States as well as in SK. In the United States, estimates of bullying victimization
generally indicate that about one out of every five students experiences victimization in some form
(Carlyle and Steinman, 2007), with prevalence varying based on the type of victimization being
discussed. For example, Wang et al. (2009) found that 36.5%of students had experienced verbal
bullying of some sort in the past two months, while 12.8%had experienced some form of physical
bullying, and 9.8%had experienced cyberbullying. The Centers for Disease Control published a
report in 2018 that looked beyond bullying and found that other forms of school victimization were
also threatening the security of adolescents: in 2017, 6%of students reported being threatened or
injured with a weapon at school in the past year, 8.5%reported being in a physical fight at school in
the past year, and 19%reported being bullied at school in that same time period. Looking beyond
school victimizations, a 2003 report found that 13%of female and 3.4%of male adolescents
reported experiencing sexual victimization at some point in their lifetime, while 13.4%of
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