The FBIs Uniform Crime Reports has collected information on crimes known to the police and arrests from local and state jurisdictions throughout the country. Braukmann, C.J., K.A. Theoretically interesting issues concerning the family (Dentler and Monroe, 1961; Gold, 1970; Nye et al., 1958; Stanfield, 1966; Voss, 1964), peers (Erickson and Empey, 1963; Gold, 1970; Matthews, 1968; Reiss and Rhodes, 1964; Short, 1957; Voss, 1964), and school (Elliott, 1966; Gold, 1970; Kelly, 1974; Polk, 1969; Reiss and Rhodes, 1963) emerged as the central focus of self-report studies. Their results indicate that there is no strong method effect in producing self-report responses, and that no one approach is consistently better than the other approaches. Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available. The mean Yules Q for African Americans is 0.82, for Hispanics 0.80, and for whites 0.83. It is not entirely clear how this setting affects the results. McRae, Jr., R.E. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Wolfgang, M.E., R.M. Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features? Figlio, and T. Sellin 1972 Delinquency in a Birth Cohort.Chicago: University of Chicago Press. That variation can be very slight or quite large. Developmental Psychology 20:1120-1134. Belson, W.A. During the first few waves, the correlations are in the 0.5 to 0.6 range, but by the last four waves they are in the 0.40 to 0.45 range. But, of course, even ethnosurveys are plagued by the same problems of faulty recall and encoding that researchers using more standard surveys encounter. It expects the machine to last six years and to operate for 30,000 hours during that time. The generally high level of concordance between self-reports of being arrested or having a police contact and having an official record has been observed in other studies as well (Hardt and Petersen-Hardt, 1977; Hathaway et al., 1960; Rojek, 1983). Overall, there is a somewhat higher degree of validity for the female respondents than the males. They surveyed a sample of 849 first-grade and 868 fourth-grade boys using a 33-item self-reported antisocial behavior scale. Farrington 1989 Development of a new measure of self-reported antisocial behavior for young children: Prevalence and reliability. When the broad matches are used, the percentage of respondents concealing or forgetting some of their offenses dropped to 36 percent and the percentage of offenses not self-reported to 22 percent. Victim and self-report surveys are dependent on various demographics such as age, race, gender, socioeconomic status, and victim-offender relationship to help explain the occurrence of crimes. Kirigin, and M.M. Fourth, based on studies of self-reported substance use, there is some evidence that validity may be less for more serious types of offenses. The differential domain of crime tapped by early self-report measures could also explain the discrepancy in findings regarding the association between social status and delinquency. But we have a very important job ahead of us to make sure that we can learn why self-report either works well or doesnt, and when it works well, and when it doesnt, said Baldwin. Widom, C.S. London: Academic Press. In a recent post, Tim Ogden and I discussed the importance of having solid, reliable data on which to base program evaluations and policy decisions. First-grade boys did have problems understanding the items regarding marijuana use and sniffing glue, and fourth-grade boys had difficulty understanding the question regarding sniffing glue. Waldo 1977 Formal and informal sanctions: A comparison of deterrent effects. For example, for stealing something worth $5 to $50, the rate for 15-year-olds dropped by 50 percent for 15-year-olds from wave 1 to wave 4. The behavioral manifestations of illegal behaviors or the precursors of such behavior can change depending on the stage in the life course at which the assessment takes place. Understand your population's health risks and improve health outcomes. This has applications to colonoscopy, which is distinctly unpleasant, and for which one would like the subject to return for a repeat test every ten years. based on self-report data versus official (and victim) data continued to perplex scholars. Some early self-report researchers favored self-administered questionnaires while others favored more personal face-to-face interviews. Criminology 13:427-448. The average Yules Q across the 11 waves is 0.50, with a range between 0.41 and 0.64. New York: Guilford Press. The role of the self-report method in the longitudinal study of criminal careers is also examined. Hence, the respondent can be more assured that answers to sensitive questions will remain private. The sample is limited to people who have just been arrested, and they are asked to provide self-incriminating evidence to a research team while in a central booking station. YouTube sets this cookie to store the video preferences of the user using embedded YouTube video. Also, if there are testing effects, neither Thornberry nor Lauritsen argues that they are unique to the NYS. Criminology 14:17-40. Crime surveys, such as self-report surveys, help determine precisely how to counter crime rates and whether changes are needed in the system. Porterfield, A.L. In their Seattle study, Hindelang and his colleagues (1981) directly tested these concerns by randomly assigning respondents to one of four conditions: nonanonymous questionnaire, anonymous questionnaire, nonanonymous interview, and anonymous interview. Voss 1974 Delinquency and Dropout. Are they also willing to self-report their involvement in undetected delinquent behavior? This is obviously a serious matter because etiological research has focused almost exclusively on longitudinal designs during the past 20 years. In doing this the same questions and the same reference period should be used at both times. But an examination of the trends for the 16 items included in their Table 2 indicates that there are more declining trends in the NYS data, 9 of 16 for the 1976-1980 comparisons and 7 of 16 for the 1976-1983 comparisons, than there are for the MTF data, 3 of 16 in both cases. Many people do not enumerate events, even when we might expect the question to lead them to do so. was higher for males than females, but there were no race differences. The CBCL also assesses internalizing problems. Application to a wider age range. Public Opinion Quarterly 60:275-304. Using Victim & Self-Report Surveys for Crime Data, FBI Uniform Crime Report: Definition, Pros & Cons. These first national SRO surveys were soon followed by a larger-scale repeated But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience. There is also room for error in personal responseshow accurately do you think you could represent the amount of exercise you get in the past month? Nora Cate Shaeffer of the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison addressed the problem of self-report in sensitive topics, such as sexual behavior or drug abuse. Overall, these correlations are reasonably high, somewhere around 0.60 for all subjects. Elliott, D.S. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University studies the memory of pain, as in painful medical procedures. Do we remember the quantity of pain as something like its intensity multiplied by its duration? Were going to need it because the interpretation of events may be important, and only the individual can provide those interpretations, said Baldwin in the opening session initiating the two-day conference. There is some evidence that repeated measures may create testing effects. also studied positive bias, the self-reporting of arrests that are not found in official records. Hill, and R. Kosterman 2000 Comparing Delinquency Careers in Court Records and Self-reports. In particular, it is essential that a general self-reported delinquency scale tap serious as well as less serious behaviors. Overall, Lauritsen offers two explanations for the observed testing effects. It is not clear whether this is a problem with the self-reports (i.e., positive bias) or with the official records such as sealed records, sloppy record keeping, use of aliases, and so forth. (1958) found that relatively few of the differences in delinquent behavior among the different socioeconomic status groups were statistically significant. Short, J.F., Jr., and F.I. Washington, DC: Springer. For the various subindicesranging from public disorder offenses to the much more serious index offensesthe reliabilities vary from a low of 0.52 (for the frequency measure of felony theft) to a high of 0.93 (for the frequency measure of illegal services). 1998 The age-crime debate: Assessing the limits of longitudinal self-report data. On the other hand, the NCVS focuses on the elderly, females, ethnic minorities, and gang members. There is no strong underlying expectation that the responses will be highly intercorrelated, and therefore an internal consistency approach to assessing reliability may not be particularly appropriate. The added benefits of providing for schedule complexity and consistency in responses make these techniques attractive, and it is clear that they will continue to be used with increasing frequency. Another way Huizinga and Elliott assessed the level of test-retest reliability is by estimating the percentage of the sample that changed frequency responses by two or less. Physiological data (e.g., from saliva or urine) can be. For example, it is likely that both validity and reliability would be improved if we experimented with alternative items for measuring the same behavior and identified the strongest ones. Second, one can use an open-ended question asking the respondent to describe the event and then probe to obtain the information necessary to classify the act. In these studies, children who were seen at hospitals for instances of sexual abuse were asked, many years later, to recall any such events. While computer-assisted administration of sensitive questions provides obvious advantages in terms of efficiency of presentation and data collection, the key question is the difference in the responses that are elicited. There were two methods of data collection: a randomized response procedure and a regular self-report interview. Wenninger 1962 Socioeconomic class and area as correlates of illegal behavior among juveniles. While the rates of underreporting are substantial, it should be noted that the majority of individuals who have been arrested self-report their delinquent behavior, and the majority of offenses they commit also are reported. By Thea Garon. Nevertheless, relatively little attention has been paid to the use of self-report tech. It does not take an expert on crime to recognize that a substantial amount of crime is not reported and, if reported, is not officially recorded. Health risk assessments (HRAs) are a source of valuable data for health and wellness professionals looking to understandand improvethe health of the population they serve. Elliott, D.S., D. Huizinga, and S.S. Ageton 1985 Explaining Delinquency and Drug Use. Public Opinion Quarterly 62:331-353. Loeber and colleagues reported that the great majority of boys understood most of the items. Weitekamp asserts that different instruments need to be used during different life stages. Finally, Lauritsen examined whether this testing effect is due to the introduction of detailed follow-up questions during wave 4 of the NYS or whether it appeared to be produced by general panel fatigue. The gender differences were quite persistent, but the race differences were more pronounced for less frequent offenders and diminished considerably for more frequent offenders. Berkeley: University of California Press. Because of this, Huizinga and Elliott pro. As was the case with the Seattle data, African American males substantially underreported their involvement in delinquency. Green-Collar Crime: Definition, Examples, & Punishment, Kent v. United States | Decision, Summary & Impact, Adair's Action-Centered Leadership Theory, Marxist Criminology & Punishment | Overview, Theory & Examples, Motor Vehicle Theft: Definition, Statistics & Law, Postmodern Criminology | Analysis, Theory & Examples, Introduction to Criminal Justice: Certificate Program, Praxis Government/Political Science (5931) Prep, Criminal Justice 306: Research Methods in Criminal Justice, English 103: Analyzing and Interpreting Literature, SAT Subject Test Chemistry: Practice and Study Guide, Political Science 102: American Government, Create an account to start this course today. Using crime statistics, it is possible to help criminal justice professionals forecast crime rates and tell when risks are rising. For example, in 1990 in New York City 28 percent of the arrestees self-reported marijuana use and 30 percent tested positive for marijuana use. It is hard to determine whether this is a problem with the self-report measures, the official measures, or both. Huesmann, L.R., L.D. The average Yules Q for the comparison between official arrests and self-reported arrests is 0.74 for males and 0.84 for females. While this study is a good first step to take in exploring the issue, it is not yet clear whether the glass is half empty or half full. Linking the findings from self-report research directly to medical practice , speaker Arthur Barsky of Harvard Medical Schools Division of Psychiatry at Brigham and Womens Hospital pointed out that there is a very poor correlation between the patients report of the seriousness of his symptoms, the medical findings of the presence of a pathological condition, and the patients utilization of health care. If so, estimates of reliability would be inflated. Similarly, reliability and validity vary across subscales (e.g., Huizinga and Elliott, 1986); improving subscales will not only help them but also the overall scale as they are aggregated. Learn more about this topic in our most recent guide, Value of Self-Reported Population Health Data: Tips for Gathering Reliable, Actionable Insights.. To assess the validity of self-reported delinquent behavior among elementary school children, Loeber and his colleagues compared the childrens self-reports to parental reports about similar behaviors. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath. Individuals who have been arrested and brought to central booking stations are interviewed and asked to provide urine specimens. People are generally not good at this, he finds, but there are interesting sex differences. In laboratory settings, men are better at perceiving their inner physiological states than are women, but the difference is largely erased when the studies are conducted in a more natural environment. White, ed. Thornberry 2001 Temporal Linkages in Violent and Nonviolent Criminal Activity. Dr. Keith holds a PhD in Criminology, an MS in Criminology, and a BA in Psychology. The studies by Thornberry and Lauritsen suggest that it is likely there is some degree of panel bias in self-report data collected in longitudinal panel studies. When youre asking people about their health habits, there is room for bias, especially when that person may be concerned about how their answers will be used. The students also self-reported whether they smoked and how often. Crime reports compile records of known offenses, those that have been submitted to law enforcement, as well as records of individuals arrested by police departments. This is particularly the case given the level of reliability that self-reported data have (see previous section). Canadian Journal of Corrections 8:20-27. Clark, J.P., and L.L. American Sociological Review 31:516-523. Not a MyNAP member yet? There were also some notable differences. Copyright 2023 National Academy of Sciences. HRA, They also suggested a number of changes in the way in which self-report data are measured, so that the data reflect the fact that some offenders contribute disproportionately to the rate of serious and violent delinquent acts. Private Law Enforcement: Types, Functions & Roles. Farrington et al. You need self-reported data. 1997 Adolescence-limited and life-course-persistent offending: A complementary pair of developmental theories. In addition to several partial replications of Hirschis arguments (Conger, 1976; Hepburn, 1976; Hindelang, 1973; Jensen and Eve, 1976), other theoretical perspectives such as social learning theory (Akers et al., 1979), self-concept theory (Jensen, 1973; Kaplan, 1972), strain theory (Elliott and Voss, 1974; Johnson, 1979), and deterrence theory (Anderson et al., 1977; Jensen et al., 1978; Silberman, 1976; Waldo and Chiricos, 1972) were evaluated using data from self-report surveys. Current self-report measures typically include 30 to 40 items measuring a wide array of delinquent acts. School-age children, even those as young as first grade, begin to participate in delinquent behaviors. Not only do people calculate the risk of revealing sensitive information (e.g., they may ask themselves Will my spouse find out? Will the police find out?), but they may even reinterpret the question, so as to allow themselves to answer evasively. We begin with a study of a minor form of deviant behavioradolescent tobacco use. Should we simply ask the open-ended question How many times did you do X last week? Or, should we ask the same thing using a decompositional approach? The similarities and differences in our understanding of criminal career parameters in self-report data and official data are just beginning to be investigated. This article discusses the body of research using self-report surveys, covering both the development and use of self-report measures, noting the strengths and weaknesses of this measure of crime. If the coin lands on tails, please tell me the truth. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 54:322-327. The trick is to recognize the limits of this type of data and take measures to minimize bias and error. Usually, the information received in crime surveys shows higher crime numbers than the records that the police departments have. One concerns generalized panel fatigue, suggesting that as respondents are asked the same inventory at repeated surveys they become less willing to respond affirmatively to screening questions. one of the most important methodological issues confronting the self-report method and should be a high priority for future research efforts. Anderson, L.S., T.G. As a result, the best that can be done is to compare different flawed measures of criminal involvement to see if there are similar responses and results. The sections that follow describe the key methodological developments that have made such applications possible. Waldo, and T.G. Catalano, and J.Y. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Items that were age appropriate were selected, and some behaviors were placed in a number of different contexts in order to make them less abstract for the younger children. Van Kammen, and D.P. Criminology 27:389-418. Their self-report inventory was quite extensive, consisting of 69 items divided into the following major subindices: official contact index, serious crime index, delinquency index, drug index, and school and family offenses index. Social Problems 20(2):209-229. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 61:911-919. In any event, caution is needed in using these data to generalize to the validity of typical self-report inventories. Beebe, T.J., P.A. The Science of Self-Report. Fox 1981 The validity of randomized response for sensitive measurements. We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. Klein, ed. Short and Nyes work stimulated much interest in both use of the self-report methodology and the relationship between some measure of social status (socioeconomic status, ethnicity, race) and delinquent behavior. The Nation's Two Crime Measures. Costa 1991 Beyond Adolescence: Problem Behavior and Young Adult Development. Farrington, D.P., R. Loeber, M. Stouthamer-Loeber, W.B. For behaviors that are more sporadic, on the other hand, it is better to ask decompositional questions (i.e., to help the respondent by breaking the problem up into chunks). 1990 Behavioral Problems in Preschool Children: Clinical and Developmental Issues. There is an external criterion for one class of deviant behaviorsubstance use. Overall, construct validity may offer the strongest evidence for the validity of self-report measures of delinquency and crime. Thus, self-reports tap a different, less serious domain of behaviors than either of the other two sources, and discrepancies in observed relationships when using self-reports should not be surprising. This information is achieved by interviewing both deviant and regular adolescents, covering issues such as substance abuse, violence, and depression, among other topics. Please read our. Psychological Review 100:674-701. Elliott 1983 A Preliminary Examination of the Reliability and Validity of the National Youth. All rights reserved. Much of this work has relied on official data. Pp. Population Health, Don Hall, DrPH, CHES, Founder Nevertheless, content validity and construct validity appear to be quite high, and an overall estimate of criterion validity would be in the moderate-to-strong range. In summarizing much of the previous literature in this area, Huizinga and Elliott (1986:300) state: Test-retest reliabilities in the 0.85 - 0.99 range were reported by several studies employing various scoring schemes and numbers of items and using test-retest intervals of from less than one hour to over two months (Kulik et al., 1968; Belson, 1968; Hindelang et al., 1981; Braukmann et al., 1979; Patterson and Loeber, 1982; Skolnick et al., 1981; Clark and Tifft, 1966; Broder and Zimmerman, 1978). In waves 4 through 11, the arrest questions were presented as follow-up questions to the self-reported delinquency/drug use inventory and a global arrest question (arrested or picked up for anything else) was included at the end. Thus, prison data are less useful than court or police data as a measure of actual delinquent or criminal behavior. They found a surprisingly high degree of concordance between childrens and parents reports about the prevalence of delinquent behavior. Also, you can type in a page number and press Enter to go directly to that page in the book. This is a younger-age version of the self-reported delinquency index used by the three projects of the Program of Research on the Causes and Correlates of Delinquency. And while the empirical data that clinicians obtainsuch as blood pressure or lab resultsare . Tourangeau and Smith indicate that techniques that are self-administered generally elicit higher rates of problematic behaviors than those administered by an interviewer. Psychologist James Pennebaker, Southern Methodist University, presented data from studies on the ability to perceive ones own physical symptoms and other aspects of physiology such as heart rate. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. He argues that even such studies as the NYS (Elliott, 1994) do not include many items that are more serious, and therefore appropriate for adults, than the items included in the original Short and Nye study (1957). When crime surveys improve crime rates, people live in less fear. Jensen, G.F., and R. Eve 1976 Sex differences in delinquency. Life satisfaction and happiness vary widely both within and among countries. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. This approach began with official data but is increasingly coming to rely on self-report data. But in any individual case, one doesnt know how accurate a source is. We have examined three different approaches to assessing the validity of self-reported measures of delinquency and crime: content, construct, and criterion validity. For those who were 13, 15, or 17 at the start of the NYS, involvement in both general delinquency and serious delinquency decreased significantly over the next four years. NCQA Relatively little attention has been paid to this issue in the study of criminal careers and, in particular, the study of self-report measures. Unlike most studies in this area, the respondents were adults (mean age = 28). Klein, ed. Longitudinal research has demonstrated a substantial degree of continuity in offending. TABLE 3-2 Yules Q Comparing the Prevalence of Self-Reported and Official Data, Rochester Youth Development Study, by Gender, Self-Reported Arrests with Official Arrests (n = 597 to 683), Self-Reported Delinquency/ Drug Use with Official Arrests (n = 599 to 686), Self-Reported Arrests with Official Arrests (n = 234 to 257), Self-Reported Delinquency/ Drug Use with Official Arrests (n = 234 to 257). Lauer 1983 Are self-reports of adolescent deviance valid? Its data shows that the rate of abortions among women has generally been declining in the U.S. since 1981, when it reported there were 29.3 abortions per 1,000 women in that age range. One reason for the use of computer-assisted data collection that is particularly relevant for this paper is its potential for collecting sensitive information in a manner that increases the confidentiality of responses. Studies using either the CBCL, some other parental or teacher report of problem behaviors, or observational ratings have demonstrated that there is a relationship between these early manifestations of problem behavior and antisocial behavior in school-age children (Belsky et al., 1996; Campbell, 1987; Richman et al., 1982; Shaw and Bell, 1993).2. Please login with your APS account to comment. Self-reported data is collected when individuals directly respond to questions about their own health status and behaviors. Journal of Quantitative Criminology 16:87-100. To address this crucial element of research, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) held an informative conference here in November, The Science of Self-report: Implications for Research & Practice, at which more than 500 researchers and policymakers learned about many of the critical limits of self-report as a research tool as well as some of the latest techniques to enhance its effectiveness. Internal consistency means that multiple items measuring the same underlying concept should be highly intercorrelated. Rather, researchers have measured these key indicators through either parental reports or observational ratings. 1946 Youth in Trouble. 11-54 in Developmental Theories of Crime and Delinquency, Volume 7: Advances in Criminological Theory, T.P. This finding is consistent with the overall conclusion in the Seattle study that the method of administration is relatively unimportant. Criminology 32:1-21. By allowing respondents to report the number of delinquent acts they committed rather than specifying an upper limit (e.g., 10 or more) and by focusing on high-rate offenders, Elliott and Ageton found relationships between engaging in serious delinquent behavior and race and social class that are more consistent with results from studies using official data. Performance on other cognitive tasks is affected by mood, and so we should expect recall to be influenced by mood. Each of these programs produces valuable information about aspects of the nation . Kirigin, and M.M. Probation 25:107-112. I feel like its a lifeline. Verified answer. They include comparisons between individuals with and without official arrest records, between individuals, convicted and not convicted of criminal offenses, and between institutionalized adolescents and high school students. The coefficients for the early waves are similar to those reported in previous studies of adolescents (e.g., Hindelang et al., 1981). 1993 Life-course-persistent and adolescence-limited antisocial behavior: A developmental taxonomy. Hindelang and colleagues (1981) offer one of the clearer assessments of construct validity.
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