Agnew's General Strain Theory

General strain theory is a transformation of many theories into the best possible version of the theory. Agnew created a vision of society, race, gender, and strain that affect a lot of people how they cope with that strain is what determines their future. They found this and theorized this, including how the strains can begin and adding more of into those categories. What I focused on is the broad view on general strain theory.

Origin of the Theory Agnew in the 1980’s transformed numerous versions of the strain theories to theorize a version we now know as the general strain theory. It includes similar models that others have proposed like Merton, Cohen, and Cloward and Ohlin. Although Agnew enhanced his theory by expanding the range

This thinking proposed a new hypothesis based “on the relationship among strain, negative emotions, legitimate coping, and criminal/deviant outcomes. Their method came from self-report survey, and a nonrandom sample of undergraduate students at Northwestern University. Since this theory is based around behavioral characteristics one of the greatest ways to get the research is to run self report surveys; that is why this method was chosen and due to the larger sample quantity it made it easier to get back quality surveys. This study ended with a total of eight 896 students. This study is a smaller sample to see how the results come out and how the theory tests accordingly and if they can expand. They asked questions about five different sections: stain, negative emotions, legitimate coping strategies, illegitimate/deviant outcomes, and control variables. This study focused on how the different types of strain affected these students and how or if it leads to delinquency behavior or anger. This study offered support for general strain theory, but the discrepancies were the amount of support they showed for the strain/crime relationship. “Results suggest that strains are

This theory used undergraduate students in the spring of 1997, focusing on all levels and eliminating labs and directed study. All data collection occurred in the classroom with the professors’ approval. There were a total of 414 enrolled students, while 382 students completed the questionnaire. The method was a scenario questionnaire passed out during the duration of a class. The students were given two different hypothetical although believable situations and asked to rate how they felt about them and estimate how they would behave in a similar situation. They scaled these situations on a zero to ten basis. The first scenario they were faced with was assault, and the following scenario was shoplifting. Strain was measured using two negative life events; and the response was the defined behavior. Another section of the questionnaire was more personal and inquired the person to answer questions about the former behavior, beliefs, peers’ criminal activities, and gender. An alternative part of this study was to see how anger affects the levels of strain; as well as the types of anger these types of subjects feel during strain. Situational anger ties more into general strain theory having more of an affect meaning that a specific situation or strain makes people angry in the moment causing somebody to act irrationally and cope illegally. The results