self reported surveys are a third source of information for

Weitekamp asserts that different instruments need to be used during different life stages. Understanding the relationship between self-reported offending and If so, the similarity across different measurement strategies heightens the probability that the various measures are tapping into the underlying concept of interest. Smith, and K. Tobin In Press The Toll of Gang Membership: Gangs and Delinquency in Developmental Perspective. Of these two basic psychometric properties, the evidence for reliability is stronger. Some early self-report researchers favored self-administered questionnaires while others favored more personal face-to-face interviews. 329-346 in Cross-National Research in Self-Reported Crime and Delinquency, M.W. People will tend to present themselves in a positive light, sometimes to look good, and sometimes to please the researcher. And while the empirical data that clinicians obtainsuch as blood pressure or lab resultsare good indicators of a persons current health, only the individual can provide details on other aspects of their wellbeing, such as their mental health status or lifestyle habits that play a significant role in their future health. This survey is one of the most important sources of self-report data on criminal careers and the causes of offending, although concerns have been raised about testing effects in it (Thornberry, 1989; Lauritsen, 1999). Reiss, A.J., Jr., and A.L. These eight classifications are: The UCR focuses on information on these significant crimes because offenses in these categories are most consistently reported, and so rates can be adequately compared. 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. The question is posed according to the desired sampling, which can be purely random over time or contingent upon various other behaviors (like drinking coffee). Of the remaining 50 respondents though, 20 said yes because they smoked marijuana, so the prevalence of marijuana use is 20 out of 50, or 40 percent. They found a surprisingly high degree of concordance between childrens and parents reports about the prevalence of delinquent behavior. Pp. Lizotte, C.A. Table 3-3 presents the results by race/ethnicity. (1958) found that relatively few of the differences in delinquent behavior among the different socioeconomic status groups were statistically significant. As a member, you'll also get unlimited access to over 88,000 The two most common approaches are to compare self-reported delinquency scores with official arrest records and self-reports of arrest records with official arrest records. 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. National Center for Health Statistics. 11 waves of data, waves 2 through 12. For all offenses except marijuana use, comparisons between adjacent waves indicated that age-specific prevalence rates decreased more often than they increased. Donovan, and F.M. But, of course, even ethnosurveys are plagued by the same problems of faulty recall and encoding that researchers using more standard surveys encounter. The final topic addressed in this chapter concerns suggestions for future research. 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. The drop in the validity estimates for self-reported delinquency is consistent with a testing effect, although the major decline does not occur until the last few waves. While these advances are significant, they have increased the potential for the data to be contaminated by testing or panel effects. The Ultimate Guide to Health Risk Assessments, A Large Employer Realizes Over $85,000 in Direct ROI from the Wellsource HRA, Checklist: Choosing the Right Health Risk Assessment, By Dr. Brittany Carter, Director of Health and Resources at Wellsource. Screening for trivial behaviors. The gender differences were quite persistent, but the race differences were more pronounced for less frequent offenders and diminished considerably for more frequent offenders. This workshop was designed to consider similarities and differences in the methodological problems encountered by the survey and criminal justice research communities and what might be the best focus for the research community. Putting this all together, it could be concluded that for most analytical purposes, self-reported measures are acceptably accurate and valid. A current controversy in the criminological literature is the source of this continuity. Thus, prison data are less useful than court or police data as a measure of actual delinquent or criminal behavior. Osgood, D.W., P. OMalley, J. Bachman, and L. Johnston 1989 Time trends and age trends in arrests and self-reported illegal behavior. The Pittsburgh study, as one of three projects in the Program of Research on the Causes and Correlates of Delinquency, uses the same self-reported delinquency index as described earlier for the Rochester Youth Development Study. A variety of external criteria have been used (see the discussion in Hindelang et al., 1981). 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. They observed more similarity in those characteristics between victimization and Uniform Crime Reports data than between self-report data and the other two sources. Biochemical measures, randomized response, and the bogue pipeline in smoking behavior. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads. used to independently assess recent use of various substances. Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features? Table 3-1 presents the results for the total Rochester sample at each of, TABLE 3-1 Yules Q Comparing the Prevalence of Self-Reported and Official Data, Rochester Youth Development Study, Total Panel, Self-reported arrestsa with official arrests (n = 834 to 940), Self-reported delinquency/ drug use with official arrests (n = 836 to 943). The potential of the self-report methodology in examining etiological theories of delinquency was perhaps best displayed in Hirschis (1969) Causes of Delinquency. Saris, W.E. This effect likely would be unequally distributed across respondents because those who had the most extensive involvement in delinquency would have the most time to lose by answering affirmatively to the delinquency items. There does not appear to be a strong developmental trend in the validity of these data. FBI The Nation's Two Crime Measures LeBlanc (1989) suggests that a strategy of in. Thornberry, T.P., ed. Farrington 1989 Development of a new measure of self-reported antisocial behavior for young children: Prevalence and reliability. What then can be said about the psychometric properties of self-reported measures of delinquency and crime? Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet. Early self-report scales tended to ignore serious criminal and delinquent events and concentrated almost exclusively on minor forms of delinquency. Developmental Psychology 20:1120-1134. Journal of Health and Social Behavior 38:87-103. While mindful of the limitations of internal consistency approaches, Hindelang and colleagues (1981) reported Cronbachs alpha coefficients for a variety of demographic subgroups and for the ever-variety, last-year variety, and last-year frequency scores. There is a considerable amount of underreporting, and there is also the potential problem of differential validity. This is generally what we see, although consistent with the literature, these coefficients are somewhat lower than those in the top panel. Linda Williams of the University of New Hampshires Family Research Laboratory has documented the other side of this issue, the false negative for a documented event. While there is certainly room for improvement, the validity appears acceptable for most analytical tasks. Self-report data is gathered typically in paper-and-pencil or electronic format or sometimes through an interview. 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. Loeber, R., D.P. There are no strong developmental trends across time for any of the three groups. Verified answer. HRA, A number of studies have assessed the test-retest reliability of self-reported delinquency measures. Blumstein, A., J. Cohen, J.A. If the general domain of delinquent and criminal behavior is to be represented in a self-report scale, it is necessary for the scale to cover that same wide array of human activity. 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. was higher for males than females, but there were no race differences. The parents and teachers of these children also were surveyed using a combination of the appropriate CBCL and delinquency items. Perhaps the most significant development in the application of the self-report methodology is its use in following the same subjects over time in order to account for changes in their criminal behavior. Thornberry, ed. Overall, it is not clear to what extent a randomized response approach actually generates more complete and accurate reporting. The challenges confronting this approach to measurement are daunting; after all, individuals are asked to tell about their own undetected criminality. Berkeley: University of California Press. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science 54:456-469. Monachesi, and L.A. Young 1960 Delinquency rates and personality. It is possible that offenses committed at these ages (early 20s) are less public and therefore somewhat less well correlated with arrest data. logical variables with different self-report measures collected under different conditions. Klein, M.W., ed. Braukmann, C.J., K.A. Population Health, Don Hall, DrPH, CHES, Founder 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. 1994 Interview mode effects in surveys of drug and alcohol use. Rounding errors are frequent when self-reported time intervals approach conventional discrete units of time (e.g., an hour, a week, a month, a year). The NCVS can sample various households or people in different jurisdictions and collect data. 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. American Sociological Review 26:733-743. The biggest difference between the UCR and the NCVS is that the latter, NCVS, includes crimes that have not been reported to the authorities. The evidence for criterion validity is less clear-cut. Self-Reported Surveys *** Based on many of the same principles as victim surveys but focusing instead on offenders, self- reported surveys are a third source of data from criminologists. 203-225 in Cross-National Research in Self-Reported Crime and Delinquency, M.W. A 21-item list of criminal and antisocial behaviors was used to measure delinquency, although in most of their analyses a scale comprised of a subset of only seven items was employed. American Journal of Sociology 63:381-389. These findings are encouraging and suggest that self-report instruments, if administered with concern for the age of the respondents, can be used for very young children. Repeated use of a measuring instrument will always pro. Antisocial behavior has been likened to a chimera (Patterson, 1993) with manifestations that change and accumulate with age. In other cases it may mean recognizing that different behaviors at different ages imply consistency in behavioral style (Campbell, 1990). Two studies were particularly instrumental at that time in pointing to flaws in self-report measures. REVIEW CHAPTER 2 Flashcards | Chegg.com American Sociological Review 28:826-834. The NYS began in 1976 by surveying a national probability sample of 1,725 youth ages 11 through 17. Advancement of Science 25:171-184. Sociological Quarterly 4:135-149. Is this a causal association or an example of preferential recall of mood congruent memories? Tourangeau and Smith (1996) reviewed 18 studies that compared different modes of data collection. While not ideal, this is the best that can be done in this area of inquiry. New York: Guilford Press. 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. Respondents were asked if they had been arrested and, if so, how many times. Social Problems 12:78-85. On the one hand, individuals may be reluctant to provide additional self-incriminating evidence after having just been arrested. Also, the randomized response technique generated random errors; that is, the errors were not correlated with other important variables. Some research, especially in the alcohol and drug use area, has found a method effect. One of the most exciting developments in criminology over the past 15 years has been the emergence of a life-course or developmental focus (Farrington, 1986; Jessor, 1998; Thornberry, 1997; Thornberry and Krohn, 2001; Weitekamp, 1989). There is generally a fairly high concordance for marijuana use. Concordance was higher for first graders than fourth graders, which Loeber et al. Recognition, Download Kirigin, and M.M. The results for females are unstable, probably because of the low number of females who were arrested at these six-month intervals. The reporting rates for gender, race, and social class groupings are quite comparable to the overall rates, with one exception. Say we receive 70 yes responses in a sample of 100 respondents. Five of the most salient of these characteristics are the inclusion of (1) a wide array of offenses, including serious offenses; (2) frequency response sets; (3). Second, based on the results of the tests of criterion validity, there appears to be a substantial degree of either concealing or forgetting past criminal behavior. Future research should address this issue directly and attempt to identify techniques for eliminating it. Some of them involve the construction of valid measures at different developmental stages; others involve the consequences of repeated measures. Tifft 1966 Polygraph and interview validation of self-reported delinquent behavior. Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email. To gain these desirable qualities, however, requires a considerable expansion of the self-report schedule. For example, 47 percent of the New York City arrestees self-reported cocaine use and 74 percent tested positive. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology 21:35-49. ' Or, This interviewer has a hell of a nerve; its none of his business, ergo I dont feel dishonest lying about this.). copyright 2003-2023 Study.com. Hindelang, M.J., T. Hirschi, and J.G. If the child still did not understand the question, the item was skipped. The level of differential validity is. Although the self-report method began with the contributions of. The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is a victim survey program that works to identify the number of people who have been crime victims within a specific period. A few examples of this approach can be offered. Wenninger 1962 Socioeconomic class and area as correlates of illegal behavior among juveniles. With respect to reliability, this approach to measuring involvement in delinquency and crime appears to be acceptable. The average Yules Q across the 11 waves is 0.50, with a range between 0.41 and 0.64. For the comparison between self-reported delinquency/drug use and official arrests, the average association is 0.43 for the males and 0.52 for the females. 1968 Differential identification: An empirical note. These self-reports involve participants who may or may not have been victims of crime. Pp. There are no perfectly valid measures, but some measures are more valid than others. However, he says, many pain control techniques are effective because they influence affect and mood, more than they influence the intensity of the pain per se. Waldo 1977 Formal and informal sanctions: A comparison of deterrent effects. As other speakers stated repeatedly during these two days, the respondent is always telling us something important. Considerable attention has been paid to the development and improvement of their psychometric properties. APS Fellow Donald Bersoff of the Villanova University School of Law addressed the knotty problems arising from ethical considerations in asking sensitive questions. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 64:464-470. In addition to concern over construct continuity in applying the technique to different-aged respondents, researchers need to consider the possibility of panel or testing effects. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Olson 1958 Socioeconomic status and delinquent behavior. Rhodes 1959 A Socio-Psychological Study of Adolescent Conformity and Deviation. Assuming the urine samples provide a reasonably accurate estimate of actual drug use, they can be used to validate self-reported information. Fourth, based on studies of self-reported substance use, there is some evidence that validity may be less for more serious types of offenses. She limited her analysis to four of the seven cohorts in the NYS, those who were 11, 13, 15, and 17 years old at wave 1. For example, many mental patients report being abused in childhood. Also, ACASIs elicit higher rates than CASIs. Life satisfaction and happiness vary widely both within and among countries. Harrison, J.A. In many cases, the accuracy of a subjects response depends on the understanding of the question. 1991 Computer-Assisted Interviewing. Brame, R., S. Bushway, R. Paternoster, and T.P. In fact, people often fail even to accurately enter many simple events into their memory, let alone document them on paper. With few exceptions, the odds ratios comparing self-reported measures and official court petitions are signifi. Condition-targeted health assessments for service line growth. The self-report approach to measuring crime has acceptable, albeit far from perfect, reliability and validity. What is Self-Reported Health Data and Why is it Critical for Population Health Programs? Not at all. Maintaining the age appropriateness of the items while at the same time ensuring content validity is a knotty problem that we have just begun to address. We now turn to an assessment of whether self-reported measures of delinquency are psychometrically acceptable. and Compliance, Evidence-Based CJ Chapter 2 Flashcards | Quizlet The technology was soon adapted to the personal interview setting with either the interviewer administering the schedule, the computer-assisted personal interview, or the respondent self-administering the schedule by reading the questions on the computer screen and entering the responsesthe computer-assisted self-administered interview (CASI). At a more practical level, several studies have adapted self-report measures to both childhood and adulthood. These predictions can be followed with police intervention to prevent crime. Two strategies are generally available. Many people do not enumerate events, even when we might expect the question to lead them to do so. Overall, there is a somewhat higher degree of validity for the female respondents than the males. Given the secretive nature of criminal behavior, however, there is nothing comparable to a scale in the world of crime. 7.3 Crime and Criminals - Sociology - University of Minnesota However, most early self-report instruments failed to include serious offenses in the inventory and truncated the response categories for the frequency of offenses. This study was conducted as part of the Rotterdam Youth Monitor, a youth health surveillance system. It is not yet clear why these coefficients decline over time. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 67:450-460. Lauer 1983 Are self-reports of adolescent deviance valid? Self-report questions have a tendency to elicit reports of trivial acts that are very unlikely to elicit official reactions and even acts that are not violations of the law. This cookie, set by Cloudflare, is used to support Cloudflare Bot Management. The best way to examine this is to compare self-reported delinquent behavior and official measures of delinquency. 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. Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science 50:433-440. Psychological Bulletin 86:852-875. We have examined three different approaches to assessing the validity of self-reported measures of delinquency and crime: content, construct, and criterion validity. Weis 1979 Correlates of delinquency: The illusion of discrepancy between self-report and official measures. These re. Simply asking about a handful of these behaviors does not accurately represent the theoretical construct of crime. Washington, DC: Springer. Over the years a variety of group comparisons have been made to assess the validity of self-report measures. Weiler, and C.S. Its also one of the only reliable ways to collect lifestyle information, which is critical to understanding not only a persons history of health, but their future health. LeBlanc, M. 1989 Designing a self-report instrument for the study of the development of offending from childhood to adulthood: Issues and problems. Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available. Supple 1998 A comparison of computer-assisted and paper-and-pencil self-administered questionnaires in a survey on smoking, alcohol, and drug use. Farrington, D.P., R. Loeber, M. Stouthamer-Loeber, W.B. If change is observed, is it a function of changes in the persons behavior or of changes in the measure? Although most of these specific questions are skipped for most subjects since delinquency remains a rare event, this approach to measuring self-reported delinquency is a far cry from the initial days of the method, when subjects used a few categories to respond to a small number of trivial delinquencies with no follow-up items. NCQA The information also helps determine risk-prone areas, those that need more police patrol based on the times when crimes increase. Kelly, D.H. 1974 Track position and delinquent involvement: A preliminary analysis. Speaking on the subject of false positives in memory, APS Fellow Elizabeth Loftus of the Psychology Department at the University of Washington presented findingsdemonstrated in many experiments- that it is possible to create false memories. Overall, Lauritsen offers two explanations for the observed testing effects. Can a logical case be made that self-report measures of delinquency are valid in this respect? Similarly, if someone reports that they have been involved in assaultive behavior, there is no reason to assume they have been involved in drug sales or loitering. The NYS did not introduce detailed follow-up questions to the delinquency items until the fourth wave of data collection. Turner, J.T. It is important that we understand more about the validity of both types of data for these purposes. Elliott (1994) has presented information from the NYS that suggests adult self-report data are more congruent with adult arrests than juvenile self-report data are with juvenile arrests. AddThis sets this geolocation cookie to help understand the location of users who share the information. Comparing the UCR vs NCVS is not a just comparison, as the UCR surveys only reported offenses, and the NCVS surveys both reported and unreported offenses. Kulik, J.A., K.B. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 22:335-356. Internal consistency means that multiple items measuring the same underlying concept should be highly intercorrelated. The most recent investigation of this topic is by Maxfield, Weiler, and Widom (2000), using Widoms (1989) sample of child maltreatment victims and their matched controls. Separate models were estimated for violent and property offenses, for self-report and official data, and for the younger (<13) and older (>14) groups in the Rochester sample, yielding a total of eight models. If the coin lands on heads, please answer yes regardless of whether or not you smoked marijuana. gested designing self-report studies so that they would acquire sufficient data from those high-rate, serious offenders who would be most likely to come to the attention of the authorities. Journal of Quantitative Criminology 16:117-145. Nye, F.I., J.F. The U.S. Department of Justice administers two statistical programs to measure the magnitude, nature, and impact of crime in the nation: the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program and the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). Cynthia Rand of the Johns Hopkins University Asthma and Allergy Center discussed the problem of medical noncompliance. The regular self-reported interview, however, generated systematic error or bias. Bedlington, K.A. At 9 of the 11 waves there are empty cells and/or expected cell frequencies of less than 5. We expect, of course, positive correlations across these alternative measures of involvement in crime. The NYS index (Elliott et al., 1985) has 47 items designed to measure all but one (homicide) of the Uniform Crime Reports Part I offenses, 60 percent of the Part II offenses, and offenses that juveniles are particularly likely to commit. Most of the coefficients are above 0.8, and 8 of the 18 coefficients are above 0.9. Los Angeles: Kluwer Academic Publishers. There are several ways to assess criterion validity. Silberman, M. 1976 Toward a theory of criminal deterrence. Campbell, S.B. You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. After all, only an individual will know certain details of their health habits and lifestyle such as how stressed they feel, how many hours they sleep, or whether they eat a lot of red meat. A cookie set by YouTube to measure bandwidth that determines whether the user gets the new or old player interface. There are two classic ways to assess the reliability of social science measures: test-retest reliability and internal consistency. The interviewer asks a sensitive question (e.g., Have you ever smoked marijuana?) with the following special instruction: Before answering, please flip a coin. Survey Self-Reported Delinquency Indices. Focusing on the relationship between delinquent behavior and the socioeconomic status of the adolescents parents, Nye et al. Because memory is reconstructive, not merely a readout of data, it is a cognitive task. Chiricos 1974 Reported delinquency: A comparison of structured interviews and self-administered check-lists. This technique is not limited to yes or no questions or to flipping coins. Weitekamp, E. 1989 Some problems with the use of self-reports in longitudinal research. Huizinga and Elliott (1986:303) summarized these results as follows: Scales representing more serious, less frequently occurring offenses (index offenses, felony assault, felony theft, robbery) have the highest precision, with 96 to 100 percent agreement, followed by the less serious offenses (minor assault, minor theft, property damage), with 80 to 95 percent agreement. Public Opinion Quarterly 62:331-353. We are more likely to think in terms of three weeks, than 20 days, said Bradburn. to Fuel Marketing initiatives, Scale Reliability of Self-Reported Data - Financial Access Initiative Set by addthis.com to determine the usage of addthis.com service. Hindelang et al. The issue we have to consider regarding self-report data is not that it should be replaced by external measurements but that we will always need self-report about many behaviors that are simply going to be unobservable by anyone else.

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