Bob Apel (pronounced AY-pull) joined the faculty at the University at Albany in 2006. His primary research focus is the relationship between youth employment and antisocial behavior. Prior research has consistently found that adolescents who are employed for longer hours each week are more likely to be engaged in a variety of antisocial behaviors, including but not limited to substance use and delinquency. The focus of Dr. Apel's efforts has been to untangle whether this positive correlation is causal or instead a selection artifact. His findings from a nationally representative sample demonstrate conclusively that this correlation is a product of the differential selection of high-risk youths into a pattern of “intensive” employment. In a series of collaborative papers using a variety of econometric techniques (panel data methods, propensity score matching, matching on latent-class trajectories), he has found that when the selection problem is fully addressed, the correlation between youth employment and antisocial behavior disappears. In fact, in his most recent research using state child labor laws as instruments for hours of employment, he finds that the correlation is actually negative. That is, youths who increase their work involvement in response to a loosening of child labor restrictions at age 16 tend to substantially decrease their involvement in delinquent behavior.

In a second line of research, Dr. Apel is interested in the study of violent victimization. His research in this area has focused on three distinct populations—women, minorities, and adolescents. He is especially interested in how their patterns of victimization differ from other populations, as well as whether traditional theories are capable of accounting for their unique victimization experiences.

A third research interest is the relationship between family structure and juvenile delinquency. His research moves beyond the classification of youths in “intact” vs. “broken” households. He has sought to construct a more elaborate measure of family structure that accommodates such facets as marital history, cohabitation, and “blended” households. For example, he is interested in such characteristics as whether the parents are currently single, married or cohabiting, were married prior to the current union, were married or cohabiting when their joint children were born, and have children from a previous union. In addition to this attention to measurement, he is interested in what structural or processual mechanisms may account for differences in youth behavior across these diverse family situations.