Testing the model of juvenile delinquency’s occurrence and frequency

The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of attachment, life strains and association with deviant peers on frequency of juvenile delinquency by using the zero-inflated negative binomial (ZINB) regression model with R. The graphical tool “rootogram” was utilized for the goodness-of-fit visualization of the ZINB model. Research participants were 947 students in Tainan, Taiwan. The results were as follows: (1) life strains and association with deviant peers were significantly associated with the occurrence of delinquency; (2) attachment and association with deviant peers were significant predictors for the magnitude of delinquency; (3) ZINB outperformed negative binomial model for count data analysis with excessive number of responses of zero, and with over-dispersed distribution.