The impact of social withdrawal on delinquency in multicultural youth: Focusing on the moderated mediating effects of parental neglect and depression

This study aimed to comprehensively analyze the path through which the relationship between social withdrawal and delinquent behavior occurs in multicultural youth and the impact of parental neglect as a risk factor on that path. For analysis, SPSS 29.0 was used, targeting 1,145 people from the 9th round of the first panel of the ‘Multicultural Youth Panel Survey’. The main analysis used model 4 and model 7 of Process macro for SPSS (v4.2), and bootstrapping was performed for validation. As a result of the analysis, social withdrawal had a positive relationship with multicultural youth's delinquency experience through depression, and parental neglect effectively worsened depression. Additionally, bootstrapping results showed that parental neglect had a valid indirect effect in the relationship between depression and delinquency. This study is significant in that it targets multicultural youth who are in a special environment compared to general youth, seeks to explore a multidimensional path to delinquent behavior, and seeks to select risk factors along that path.