Exploration of a Journal Article in Sociology
Intro To Sociology (Soc100)
2/2/2012

My parents got a divorce when I was in my early teens. They both were consumed with their newly found freedom and did not have much time for me. I did not fit in well at school and consequently got picked on a lot at school. I did not have much drive to try to achieve anything. I was content with watching TV all day and doing nothing. I found myself getting lost in TV shows and wishing I had parents like those on TV. I lived with my dad, and he left for work at 4:00 AM in the morning. As a result of him leaving so early, there was no one home to make sure that I actually went to school. My freshman year of high school I missed 40 days of school, and my sophomore year I missed 62 days of school. When I did go to school, I often skipped classes. My truancy while in high school had nothing to do with my capability of learning because I was able to maintain B’s and C’s even though I rarely went to school. The journal article that I choose deals with the subject of adolescent truancy. I choose it in hopes that I would understand the reason I missed so many days of school. I enjoy learning and school now. It is hard for me to remember the days when I used to skip school so much. The journal article that I choose is “Playing Hooky, Examing Factors that Contribute to Adolescent Truancy” (Dommick, Correa, Liazis, & McMichael, 2011). The journal article is a new report on the CANS (Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths) assessment research and uses previous studies to compare the current research too. The assessment was administered to 20 children when they entered the CANS program and when the left the program. The information that was gathered from the assessment included “attendance records, demographic information, and assessment responses” (Dommick, Correa, Liazis, & McMichael, 2011). They expected to find a correlation between “family life, living situation, community involvement, severity of substance use, duration of substance use, and peer victimization will increase the likelihood of tardiness incidences and truancy” (Dommick, Correa, Liazis, & McMichael, 2011). The results were not what they had expected. The results did not show a correlation at all. The only factor that showed some correlation was peer victimization. Peer victimization was linked to tardiness. The people who administered the assessment concluded that the reason that it did not show a correlation is because they only gave the assessment to 20 children. Other research that had been previously done such as by Corville-Smith done in 2009 did link the factors to truancy. This topic fits into both Chapter 9 Deviance and Chapter 20 Education of the text book. The behavior is possibly explained in Chapter 9 Deviance. The