A descriptive and correlative study was done on 150 children and young adults of the families under supervision of welfare office in Bandar Lengeh city, Iran, from February 2017 to September 2017. In order to estimate the sample size, 30% of the people covered by the Welfare Organization of Bandar Lengeh were selected as samples. Those patients who have signed the consent and registered at Bander Lengeh Welfare Organization were included. Those who were reluctant to participate in the study were excluded. The sampling method was census. The data were collected by Vandalistic behaviours questionnaire, Oxford happiness questionnaire and Bell adjustment inventory. Vandalism questionnaire was developed by Mohsen Tabriz A [21]. Questionnaire was updated for the ongoing study with minor changes according to the statistical population and the scope of research. Ultimate questionnaires were delivered to experts and their opinions were applied. Questionnaire had 28 items and each item had five options from “Not at all”, “1 or 2 times”, “3 to 5 times”, “6 to 9 times” and “More than 10 times”; “Not at all” score was zero and “More than 10 times” score were 4. A higher score specifies the more intensity of the vandalistic behaviours. The minimum score of the respondents was zero and the maximum was 112. Cronbach’s alpha test was used to evaluate reliability of questionnaire and its Cronbach’s alpha was 0.74.

In general, vandalism can be seen in two ways: 1) Vandalism in which the program and the target are seen and usually performed as a group; 2) Vandalism in which there is no specific program and goal, and usually takes place individually [22]. In this study, vandalism behaviour is defined individually and without a specific purpose.

Bell Adjustment Inventory [23] was used to examine the adjustment; the inventory included 160 questions and was created by professor Bell (1962) and examines five familial, health, occupational, affective and social adjustments. According to the purposes of this study, only the social factor that included 32 questions was proposed and each question included three choices (“I don’t know”, “No” and “Yes” with 0, 1 and 2 score, respectively) by Likert scale. The least score of the respondents was zero and the maximum score was 64.

Scores below the mean indicate a tendency to aggression and scores above the mean indicates a desire to withdraw from the community.

The reliability of the inventory had been examined and its Cronbach’s alpha was 0.88 in field of social adjustment [24].

An oxford happiness questionnaire was created by Hills P and Argyle M (2002), used to examine the rate of people’s happiness and joy [25]. The questionnaire has 29 items and each one has four choices by Likert scale from 0 to 3 score and total score of the 29 items indicates the score of one’s happiness. Therefore, total happiness score of someone is from zero to 87. A higher score shows a higher level of happiness. Therefore, the score of 87 represents the highest level of happiness and the lowest score of this scale is 0, which indicates the subject’s life dissatisfaction and depression. The questionnaire includes three positive affection (6 items), satisfaction rate (18 items) and lack of negative feeling (5 items) subscales; the reliability of the questionnaire 0.90 by virtue of Cronbach scale and 0.78 after seven weeks by virtue of retest method [26].

Data gathering was conducted via referring and taking permission from welfare office in Bandar Lengeh city-Iran. After explaining, the research goals and verbal consents were taken from the participants and questionnaires were given to them for completion. Any ambiguity about the questions were resolved by the researchers by giving enough explanations. These questionnaires were nameless, and clarified to samples about the secrecy of the data. Also, informed consent was obtained from the caregivers of those samples who were below 15 years of age.

The data were entered into SPSS software version 16.0 and analysed by descriptive (frequency, frequency percent, mean, Standard Deviation (SD) and variance) and inferential (Pearson correlation test, linear regression, independent sample t-test, one-way ANOVA) statistics, significant level were considered 0.05.

Of the 150 participants, 106 (71%) were woman, most of them, 92 (61%) were 15-19 years old and 84 individuals (56%) lived in village, other demographic variables are represented in [Table/Fig-1].

The statistic, descriptive tests relating to the dispersion and gained scores indicated that the mean gained score of vandalistic behaviours was 12.41 so the highest gained score was 112. The mean and variance of other variables are shown in [Table/Fig-2].

Pearson correlation test indicated a significant relation between vandalistic behaviours and the variables of the study shown in [Table/Fig-3].

In comparison to two predicator variables, one variable was social happiness with Beta=-0.397 and another variable was social adjustment with Beta=-0.268 had the most and the least effects on the children’s vandalistic behaviours, respectively. For every unit increase in social happiness, vandalistic behaviour decrease at the rate of 0.520 and for every unit increase in social adjustment, vandalistic behaviour decrease at the rate 0.490 [Table/Fig-4].

The rate of vandalistic behaviours, social happiness and social adjustment was not differently based on the demographic variables such as sex, age group, place of life, education level, father education, mother education, income, type of house and having or not personal vehicle [Table/Fig-5].

Vandalism is a new social phenomenon which has appeared in different communities; it is known as the youth’s maladjustment with social environment [2]. This study focuses on vandalism of the students in order to find its causes in the community. As it is one of the most important distresses of the managers of cities in a way that they try to prevent it which leads to the destruction of public properties.

The essential findings of this study indicated that social happiness and its dimensions (Positive affection, satisfaction rate and lack of negative feeling) had significant and negative relation with the young adults and children’s vandalistic behaviours. The study findings are in accord with other studies such as Nordmarker A et al., who examined the role played by the personality factors (Impulsive behaviours, affective stability, optimistic manner and kindness) and sexuality in creating Swedish youth’s vandalistic behaviours and writing on the wall. The findings indicated that the involvement in vandalism had positive and significant relation with impulsive move and attention and vandalistic behaviours had no correlation with affective stability and attention and optimistic manner [27]. Also, other studies indicated that in contrast to the parameters: hope for future, social acceptance, meeting affective needs happiness had positive and direct relation with believing in religious views and feeling social security, but it had negative and inverse with feeling social deprivation, lack of recreational facilities and social happiness [28,29]. Present study examines the families under supervision of welfare office so it seems such families are in low economic level and they feel their children are exposed to deprivations, neural disorders appearance, aggression and antisocial behaviours. As Nabavi A et al., said in his study vandalism variable has a significant relation with social-economic status; in other words, perhaps it can be said that by virtue of Cohen Status Frustration Theory the people of low social classes feel deprived because of their economic conditions, social, economic and cultural field and low level of their life and social pressure due to it and when they cannot reach their desired conditions they try to achieve their goals by other ways and show more tendency to vandalistic behaviours [30].

Another important finding of the study was the negative relation between social adjustment and vandalism namely, if social adjustment is higher, the vandalistic behaviours appearance decreases. The findings of the study are in accord with the Nabavi A et al., study titled ‘The Factors Effective on Vandalistic Behaviours’ in The Secondary School Students of Ahwaz; the findings indicated if there are more correlations between community, families, schools and friends, the vandalistic behaviours appearance decreases [30].

It is noted that one becomes vandalistic due to different social and mental factors, of which the most important ones playing considerable role in the youth’s tendency towards deviations are their family, education organization and social environment. Findings from bivariate analysis student’s abnormal behaviours rate has a statistically significant relation with familial intimacy and educational undertaking [30]. By another study vandalistic behaviours issue considered as the defensive strategy and adjustment behaviour [31].

In present study, there was no relationship between sex and age with vandalistic behaviours. However, other studies have shown that vandalistic behaviours are more in adolescents and young adults which reduce with increasing age [32]. According to further another studies, male had more vandalistic desire [27]. In contrary to this Torkaman M et al., in Tehran, Iran concluded that female students have more tendency to vandalistic behaviours [11]. In the US, male students had high scores of the vandalistic behaviours [33]. It seems that vandalistic behaviours could be affected by some contextual variables such as socioeconomic factors [34]. This may explain the sex and age differences, hence need for more studies.

The study execution had encountered with some limits; it was sectional; this is why it was difficult to conclude about causality; also the execution lasted a long time due to a lot of questions in the questionnaires that may have influenced the respondent’s attention. Questionnaires were used in the study to create the field so perhaps some subjects did not state their real views. Due to the countless vulnerability of women in compare with men in society and limited resources to cover all such susceptible individuals, the welfare organization, due to more women’s needs, cover this group more than men. Therefore, the higher number of women in compare with men in this study does not indicate the prevalence of vandalistic behaviours in women.

Vandalistic behaviours have inverse relation with social adjustment and happiness so, it is possible to prevent such behaviours by promoting such factors. Considering a lot of factors effective on social adjustment and happiness, it is possible to use other strategies such as for instance, the promotion of familial and school relations, peers and mass media. Also, by virtue of Cohen Status Frustration Theory considering the behavioural deviations of the low class people, mostly due to economic and social pressures and discriminations. It believes, decrease in the class differences will possibly lead to less youth’s vandalistic behaviours and crimes.