Hirschi’s Social Bonding Theory Nearly 45 Years Later: A comparison of a traditional, contemporary and hybrid model

The present study investigates the following aspects of Hirschi's (1969) social bonding theory: attachment to parents, attachment to school, involvement in conventional activities, and the belief bond.Specifically, a goal is to fill a gap in the literature by comparing Hirschi's traditional measures to contemporary measure using a single independent national sample of American high school students.Results indicated that the Hybrid Model was the strongest and the Contemporary Model was the weakest.Thus, it is argued that Hirschi's traditional measures predict the largest amount of selfreport general deviance.