This thesis concerns the third phase of the Reaction Pattern Research at the Institute of special pedagogics of the Groningen State University. The project Reaction Pattern Research (RPR) started in 1980. It is an attitude research about reactions and motivation of juveniles when confronted with social limits. We are not interested in actual reactions and motives. The differences between youngsters with and without behaviour problems beheld in the existence and non-existence of observable behaviour that may be identified as problematic. The problem then is how to explain the difference. In broad outline there are two kinds of explanation . First the explanation wich state that the circumstances in wich some people grow force them to the wrong. Second, explanations wich assume that deviancy stems for a personality trait, wich causes the person to reject and exceed social limits. In our opinion only a combination of these two notions can yield a satisfactory explanation of deviant behaviour. Therefore we approached the problem from both sides. First we tried to study the attitude of juveniles to social limits by asking them how they would react if they were confronted with social limits and why they wouls react in that certain way. Second reviewing the literature in point (cf Rink et al.,1989), we considered the ecology of this attitude of equal importance. So we tried to determine how these juveniles valued their circumstances, basing on the assumption that the subjective perception has a greater influence on behaviour than the objective circumstances themselves.