In this case the reliability of the scale would be underestimated. This is an understudied topic that needs greater investigation. Smith, and K. Tobin In Press The Toll of Gang Membership: Gangs and Delinquency in Developmental Perspective. While sitting at home? have relied on Wellsource for innovative, evidence-based, NCQA-certified health risk assessment solutions to American Sociological Review 41:442-461. While not ideal, this is the best that can be done in this area of inquiry. (PDF) SelfReport Questionnaires - ResearchGate Advancement of Science 25:171-184. If a subject reports self-destructive behavior, should the researcher intervene? In one case, individuals are asked if they have been victims of crime; in the other, they are asked to self-report their own criminal activity. EMA requires the subject/patient to carry a custom-designed palm-top computer, which prompts him throughout the day to answer a question (e.g., Are you smoking right now?). There is a fundamental difficulty in assessing the criterion validity of self-reported measures of delinquency and crime and for that matter all measures of delinquency and crime. Application to a wider age range. Many individual items are required to represent the entire domain of delinquent behavior, to represent each of its subdomains, and to ensure that each subdomain (e.g., violence, drug use) is itself adequately represented. Dr. Keith has instructed adult and collegiate learners for over 8 years in social science theory, research, and statistics with real-world application. quite different from those collected in typical self-report surveys. Tourangeau and Smith indicate that techniques that are self-administered generally elicit higher rates of problematic behaviors than those administered by an interviewer. This study was conducted as part of the Rotterdam Youth Monitor, a youth health surveillance system. Nevertheless, most of the test-retest correlations are above 0.9. A major question about the validity of self-report data concerns differential levels of reporting by race/ethnicity and gender. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Esbensen 1998 Some not so boring findings from the Denver Youth Survey. The Science of Self-Report. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. noted lower levels of reporting for females than males and for blacks than whites. Social Problems 13:314-324. The overall trend suggests a panel effect. Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website. Sociology and Social Research 58:380-386. They sampled people who had been arrested in Philadelphia and then went to their homes to interview them. 1989 Child abuse, neglect, and violent criminal behavior. Stone. 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. Lizotte, and C.M. 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. Hindelang and colleagues (1981) also estimated test-retest reliabilities for these three self-report measures for each of the demographic subgroups. Farrington, eds. 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. Concordance was higher for first graders than fourth graders, which Loeber et al. Boulder, CO: Behavioral Research Institute. NCQA Aquilino, W.S., and L. LoSciuto 1990 Effects of interview mode on self-reported drug use. ACASI has two additional advantages. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice. Social Problems 20: 471-487. You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. This approach is quite straightforward. Farrington and colleagues (1996), using data from the middle and oldest cohorts of the Pittsburgh Youth Study, also examined this issue. In many cases, the accuracy of a subjects response depends on the understanding of the question. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. For the 11-year-old cohort, the rate of change was also negative but not statistically significant. Terence P. Thornberry and Marvin D. Krohn. This would not account for the drop in the age-specific rates observed by Thornberry (1989), however. 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. APS Fellow John Kihlstrom of the Department of Psychology at Yale University took a logical and deductive approach to the problem of the influence of affect on memory. There is no evidence of a strong developmental trend for these data. Thus she concludes, as Thornberry did, that the reduced reporting is unlikely to have been produced by the addition of follow-up questions. State Law Enforcement Agencies & Roles | What Is State Law Enforcement? 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. The average Yules Q for the comparison between official arrests and self-reported arrests is 0.74 for males and 0.84 for females. Test-retest measures (and internal consistency measures) indicate that self-reported measures of delinquency are as reliable as, if not more reliable than, most social science measures. 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. They were interviewed only once, so all of the self-reported arrest data are retrospective, with relatively long recall periods. 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. Data compiled in victim and self-report surveys is analyzed and used to provide additional resources like lighting and CCTV, develop and refine theories of crime, and create crime prevention policies for police implementation. Over the years a variety of group comparisons have been made to assess the validity of self-report measures. They observed that a relatively small number of youth commit a disproportionate number of serious offenses. Richman, N., J. Stevenson, and P.J. Perez 1997 The interrelationship between substance use and precocious transitions to adult statutes. reported no effect, and Tracy and Fox (1981) reported sizable positive effects. Happiness and Life Satisfaction - Our World in Data The reliability coefficients vary somewhat depending on the number and types of delinquent acts included in the index and the scoring procedures used (e.g., simple frequencies or ever-variety scores), but scores well above 0.80 are common. New York: Plenum. 1992 Manual for the Child Behavior Checklist/2-3 and 1992 Profile. Development and Psychopathology 8:477-495. White, ed. Campbell, S.B. The same subjects were reinterviewed annually through 1981. 1966 Socio-economic status and reported delinquent behavior. Wolf 1979 Social Learning and Social Control Perspectives in Group Home Delinquency Treatment Research. Hindelang and colleagues (1981) offer one of the clearer assessments of construct validity. Additional investigation is needed to identify which criminal career parameters are similar and which are different, across a variety of data sets. Kirigin, and M.M. For example, Short and Nyes (1957) inventory contains only 21 items, and most of their analysis was conducted with a 7-item index. Social Forces 76:1-29. The challenges confronting this approach to measurement are daunting; after all, individuals are asked to tell about their own undetected criminality. Social Forces 62(September):234-251. They then used juvenile court petitions as an external criterion to assess the validity of the self-reported responses. 1994 Interview mode effects in surveys of drug and alcohol use. Farrington and his colleagues (1996:509) concluded that concurrent validity for admitting offenses was higher for Caucasians but concurrent validity for admitting arrests was higher for African Americans. 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. Social Problems 25:103-112. First, it circumvents the potential problem of literacy; the respondent does not have to read the questions. Whether these same problems are evident under the enhanced confidentiality of audio interviews is an open question. 1966 Self-reported juvenile delinquency and social status. Hirschi, T. 1969 Causes of Delinquency. For example, How many times did you do X while driving? aThe associations between self-reported delinquency/drug use and official arrests are not reported for white subjects due to empty cells and/or expected cell frequencies of less than 5 in 9 of the 11 waves. Persons are interviewed on the frequency, characteristics, and consequences of criminal victimization in the United States. Block, and M.R. To gain these desirable qualities, however, requires a considerable expansion of the self-report schedule. Pp. Indeed, if one examines the general literature on delinquent and criminal behavior, it is surprising how few theoretically expected relationships are not observed for self-reported measures of delinquency and crime. For example, the odds ratio of having a court petition for delinquency is about 3:0 for the respondents in the most serious self-reported delinquency category versus the other three. And while the empirical data that clinicians obtainsuch as blood pressure or lab resultsare . Research proposal to National Institute of Mental Health from the Oregon Social Learning Center, Eugene. 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. Many studies of youngsters at, these ages have used Achenbachs (1992) Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), which is a parent-completed inventory and has versions for children as young as 2 to assess externalizing problem behaviors. With few exceptions, the odds ratios comparing self-reported measures and official court petitions are signifi. In particular, it is essential that a general self-reported delinquency scale tap serious as well as less serious behaviors. By going directly to the individual. Paper presented to the American Society of Criminology, Philadelphia. Moffitt, T.E. View our suggested citation for this chapter. If the time period between the test and the retest is too great, it is likely the responses given on the retest would be less accurate than those given on the test because of memory decay. On the other hand, the NCVS focuses on the elderly, females, ethnic minorities, and gang members. There were also some notable differences. Nye, F.I., J.F. Social Problems 14:376-383. and Compliance, Evidence-Based From their work a set of characteristics for acceptable (i.e., reasonably valid and reliable) self-report scales has emerged. The analysis by Menard and Elliott indicates that this is indeed just a suggestion at this point, as the necessary comparisons between panel studies and cross-sectional trend studies are severely hampered by the lack of comparability in item wording, administration, and other methodological differences. Additional research on this topic is imperative. Reporting Data Through High-Tech Diaries. It expects the machine to last six years and to operate for 30,000 hours during that time. Criminology 34:493-517. These predictions can be followed with police intervention to prevent crime. Moreover, the reactions of the juvenile and criminal justice systems often rely on information from victims or witnesses of crime. By posting a comment, you agree to our Community Guidelines and the display of your profile information, including your name and affiliation. Reliability of Self-Reported Data - Financial Access Initiative It is also possible that the simple fact that a respondent is reinterviewed may create a generalized fatigue and lead to decreased willingness by the respondent to respond to self-report items. 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 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. A measure is valid to the extent to which it measures the concept you set out to measure and nothing else. 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. Wenninger 1962 Socioeconomic class and area as correlates of illegal behavior among juveniles. Quickly to Meet Program needs, Certification and Some of the data that are collected include the number of visitors, their source, and the pages they visit anonymously. People will tend to present themselves in a positive light, sometimes to look good, and sometimes to please the researcher. Surveys asking people about life satisfaction and happiness do measure subjective well-being with reasonable accuracy. Nevertheless, the self-report technique can clearly be improved. Hindelang and colleagues (1979) illustrated the problems encountered when comparing the results from studies using self-reports and those using official data or victimization data by comparing characteristics of offenders across the three data sources. This chapter raised the issue of differential validity for African American males. If the coin lands on heads, please answer yes regardless of whether or not you smoked marijuana.
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