Using Victim & Self-Report Surveys for Crime Data, FBI Uniform Crime Report: Definition, Pros & Cons. One of the simplest is called known group validity. Imagine an interview setting in which there is a screen between the interviewer and respondent so that the interviewer cannot see what the respondent is doing. Belson, W.A. Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features. To search the entire text of this book, type in your search term here and press Enter. 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. The NCVS is a self-reported survey and the primary source of information on the characteristics of nonfatal criminal victimizations and on the number and types of crimes not reported to law enforcement. Research on criminal careers (Blumstein et al., 1986) has documented the importance of examining such issues as the age of onset (Krohn et al., 2001) and the duration of criminal activity (Wolfgang et al., 1987). By going directly to the individual. Voss, H.L. Wylie 1947 Our law-abiding law-breakers. These researchers also compared the extent to which boys with official court petitions self-reported being apprehended by the police. We have examined three different approaches to assessing the validity of self-reported measures of delinquency and crime: content, construct, and criterion validity. The sections that follow describe the key methodological developments that have made such applications possible. Using crime statistics, it is possible to help criminal justice professionals forecast crime rates and tell when risks are rising. More research is needed to measure the size of this effect and its sources and to identify methods to reduce its threat to the validity of self-report data in the longitudinal studies so crucial to etiological investigation. Self-reported data complements biometric or clinical data a healthcare provider may gather. The NYS did not introduce detailed follow-up questions to the delinquency items until the fourth wave of data collection. Have a plan, have a policy, discuss the pros and cons of breaking confidentiality before the issue comes up, said Bersoff. In our case the key question is: Are measures of delinquency based on the self-report method correlated in expected ways with variables expected to be risk factors for delinquency? For example, Hindelang and colleagues report alphas between 0.76 and 0.93 for various self-report measures (1981:80). The coefficients range from 0.76 to 0.93. The primary role of the NYS is to determine why youth engage in deviant behavior. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 64:464-470. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology 9:107-119. The students also self-reported whether they smoked and how often. 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. Of the pupils registered as a suspect, 62 percent admitted . Self-reporting is commonly used in psychological studies because it can yield valuable and diagnostic information to a researcher or a clinician. For more information, please see our Community Guidelines. There has been less development of instruments targeted at adults. 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. In addition to comparing and contrasting the methodological issues associated with self-report surveys and official records, the workshop explored methods for obtaining accurate self-reports on sensitive questions about crime events, estimating crime and victimization in rural counties and townships and developing unbiased prevalence and incidence rates for rate events among population subgroups. Huesmann, L.R., L.D. Bedlington, K.A. View our suggested citation for this chapter. Farrington, D.P., R. Loeber, M. Stouthamer-Loeber, W.B. The basic question is: Have you ever smoked marijuana?. A cookie set by YouTube to measure bandwidth that determines whether the user gets the new or old player interface. Short and Nyes research is distinguished from previous self-report measures in their attention to methodological issues, such as scale construction, reliability and validity, and sampling and their explicit focus on the substantive relationship between social class and delinquent behavior. The observed decline in age-specific rates could be due to an underlying secular drop in offenses during these years (1976-1981). The United States has three main types of crime surveys to help educate responders and to inform how crime is addressed. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. This would not account for the drop in the age-specific rates observed by Thornberry (1989), however. Criminology 14:17-40. Fox 1981 The validity of randomized response for sensitive measurements. Concordance was higher for first graders than fourth graders, which Loeber et al. There is a high degree of concordance between the official arrest histories and the self-reported arrest histories for the Rochester subjects. Thrasher, F. 1927 The Gang: A Study of 1,313 Gangs in Chicago. This can be illustrated by describing the major components of the index currently being used in the Rochester Youth Development Study (Thornberry et al., in press) as well as the other two projects of the Program of Research on the Causes and Correlates of Delinquency (see Browning et al., 1999). In 2013, Carlton, Inc., acquires a machine for $88,800. Williams, J.R., and M. Gold 1972 From delinquent behavior to official delinquency. There were two methods of data collection: a randomized response procedure and a regular self-report interview. Past offending is related to future offending in both official and self-report data (Farrington et al., 2000). The results vary considerably by type of drug. You need self-reported data. 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. For the general delinquency index the concurrent odds ratio was 2:8 and the predictive odds ratio was 2:2. For each item the subjects are asked if they committed the act since the previous interview. 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. By clicking Accept, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. Nearly two-thirds62%of Americans say the political climate these days prevents them from saying . NHANES is a major program of the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). 2. offenses. This is obviously a serious matter because etiological research has focused almost exclusively on longitudinal designs during the past 20 years. Thornberry, C. Rivera, and M. LeBlanc 2001 Later delinquency careers. 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. It just so happens that the sequential cohort design of the NYS makes it a good vehicle for examining this issue. Wolf 1979 Social Learning and Social Control Perspectives in Group Home Delinquency Treatment Research. In the exceptional case the number of arrests for violent offenses is so sparse over time that we do not think the estimate is reliable. All rights reserved. Lessler, and J.C. Gfroerer, eds. Weitekamp (1989) has criticized self-report studies for not only being predominantly concerned with the adolescent years but also, when covering the adult years, for using the same items used for juveniles. Waldo, G.P., and T.G. A psychiatrist asks questions until he knows the answers he is seeking, but screening tests must be designed for administration by non-specialists, with minimal preparation. Overall, there is a somewhat higher degree of validity for the female respondents than the males. 1979 Juvenile Delinquency and Its Origins. The challenges confronting this approach to measurement are daunting; after all, individuals are asked to tell about their own undetected criminality. Smith 1996 Asking sensitive questions: The impact of data collection, mode, question format, and question context. Reporting Temporal Frequencies of Behavior From Memory. The development of instruments to better measure serious offenses and the suggestion to acquire data from high-rate offenders coincided with a substantive change in the 1980s in the focus of much criminology work on the etiology of offenders. When convictions are examined, even higher concordance rates are reported (Blackmore, 1974; and Farrington, 1973). This occurs more frequently with the less serious offenses but also plagues responses to serious. Self-report crime surveys also provide comparisons and further analyze the features that link criminals, victims, and motivations that lead to crime and victimization. Development and Psychopathology 8:477-495. Developments in self-report methods have improved the quality of data collected and have expanded their applicability to the study of antisocial behavior throughout the life course. Both strategies have been used with some success. Similar results were reported by Krohn and his colleagues (1974). Over the years a variety of group comparisons have been made to assess the validity of self-report measures. to Fuel Marketing initiatives, Scale Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. In this way the respondent can admit to sensitive behavior but other people, including the interviewer, do not know if the admission is truthful or not. 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. This type of data is not as easily available in medical charts or claims data. Pp. Focusing on the relationship between delinquent behavior and the socioeconomic status of the adolescents parents, Nye et al. If these measures are valid, a reasonably large positive correlation between them would be expected. Figlio 1987 From Boy to Man, From Delinquency to Crime.Chicago: University of Chicago Press. studies need to be undertaken cautiously because of differences in samples, design features, item wording, and similar concerns. (That figure excludes data from California, Maryland, New . 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. Kirigin, and M.M. 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. Fifty of those would be produced by the coin landing on heads, and these 50 respondents can simply be ignored. Menard and Elliotts analysis also showed that at the item level, declining trends are more evident in the NYS data than the MTF data. Victim and self-report surveys such as the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and the National Youth Survey (NYS) collect information on crimes that have gone unreported to the police. Resource allocation is another role that crime surveys fill, as they help law enforcement broaden their horizons beyond budget allocation. Some of them involve the construction of valid measures at different developmental stages; others involve the consequences of repeated measures. 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. And one intention of the conference was to systematical1y review the documented problems across several research and medical contexts. For the link between self-reported delinquent behavior and official measures of delinquency, the only link based on independent sources of data, the overall correlations are somewhat smaller but still quite acceptable. Akers, R.L., M.D. Several presenters stressed the problems posed by aspects of the mechanisms of memory encoding and recall. when such technology is used. Try refreshing the page, or contact customer support. Klein, ed. The interviewer asks a sensitive question (e.g., Have you ever smoked marijuana?) with the following special instruction: Before answering, please flip a coin. 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. For the very young child, measures have been developed that are administered to parents to assess antisocial behavior such as noncompliance, disobedience, and aggression (Achenbach, 1992). Patterson, G.R., and R. Loeber 1982 The Understanding and Prediction of Delinquent Child Behavior. The time lag between the test and the retest is also important. The other major assessment of the psychometric properties of the self-report method was conducted by Huizinga and Elliott (1986) using data from the NYS. Hence, the respondent can be more assured that answers to sensitive questions will remain private. Campbell, S.B. Third, items or questions must be sampled from that range so that the ones that appear on the test are representative of the underlying concept. As is true with the case of reliability, the assessment of validity is not an either/or proposition. Wellsource, Topics: 1997 Developmental Theories of Crime and Delinquency. Hirschi, T. 1969 Causes of Delinquency. By demonstrating their involvement in the community and their knowledge of its members and workers relatives, Massey and colleagues are able to establish trust, over a period of years, and to get answers about the laborers experiences, documenting answers to non-standardized questions in an extensive data recording sheet. Paper presented to the American Society of Criminology, Philadelphia. An error occurred trying to load this video. Yarrow, eds. (See Huizinga and Elliott, 1986, for a more formal discussion of this point.). Clark, J.P., and E.P. Tourangeau and Smith (1996) reviewed 18 studies that compared different modes of data collection. In addition, empirical evidence suggests that crime does not have a clear unidimensional structure that would facilitate the sampling of a small number of items from a theoretically large pool to adequately represent the entire domain. While evident, the effect size is typically not very large. An alternative explanation concerns the changing nature of criminal behavior. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 1:38-46. Criminology 32:1-21. Future research should address this issue directly and attempt to identify techniques for eliminating it. One of the roles of crime surveys is predictive policing. is the extent to which these two measures provide the same or different results with respect to key criminal career parameters. Too many researchers of sensitive topics don t even think about what they will do, until they have in hand the information, and then they must agonize over their choices.. For all respondents there was about 10 percent less error in the randomized response technique. Focusing on the juvenile years, ages 11 to 17, they compared results based on self-reports to those based on court referrals. Jensen, G.F., and R. Eve 1976 Sex differences in delinquency. But in any individual case, one doesnt know how accurate a source is. Klein, ed. Walder 1984 The stability of aggression over time and generations. 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. Loeber and colleagues reported that the great majority of boys understood most of the items. Olweus, D. 1979 Stability and aggressive reaction patterns in males: A review. Los Angeles: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Earlier we reviewed the literature that assessed the criterion validity of self-report data. In all but one case (violent offenses for the older group measured by official data) there is a positive effect of past offenses on future offenses after unobserved heterogeneity is held constant. Population Health. Loeber, R., D.P. The NCVS can sample various households or people in different jurisdictions and collect data. Probation 25:107-112. In Measurement Issues in Criminal Justice, G.P. As compared to other race-gender groups, some studies have found that the responses provided by African American males appear to have lower levels of validity (Hindelang et al., 1981; Huizinga and Elliott, 1986). Nettler, G. 1978 Explaining Crime. Kirigin, and M.M. Rather, they estimate the number of events on the basis of some rule.. There are no fundamental challenges to the reliability of these data. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads. In wave 12 only the global question was asked. State Law Enforcement Agencies & Roles | What Is State Law Enforcement? Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. For the comparison between self-reported delinquency/drug use and official arrests, however, validity is lower for African Americans than Hispanics. Despite this general conclusion, there are still several substantial issues concerning the validity of self-report measures. Understand self-report crime surveys, compare UCR vs NCVS, and explore the role of self-report crime surveys in the US criminal system. Canadian Journal of Corrections 8:20-27. But assessing patient compliance with medical regimens and eliciting medical histories are just two of the particularly important areas in which self-report data is routinely, and perhaps blindly, accepted as reliable in many current medical contexts. Their estimates of validity are in the same range as those of most adolescent surveys. The other major assessment of the randomized response technique was conducted by Tracy and Fox (1981). American Sociological Review 44:636-655. Most of these year-to-year changes are not statistically significant, however. Practical Implications for Symptoms, Illness, & Health. Starting at school age, the range of antisocial behaviors expands to include stubbornness, lying, bullying, and other externalizing problems (Loeber et al., 1993). AddThis sets this geolocation cookie to help understand the location of users who share the information. National Center for Health Statistics. The Nation's Two Crime Measures. 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. All rights reserved. As was the case with the Seattle data, African American males substantially underreported their involvement in delinquency. They observed more similarity in those characteristics between victimization and Uniform Crime Reports data than between self-report data and the other two sources. Self-report measures of delinquent behavior have advanced remarkably in the 30-odd years since their introduction by Short and Nye (1957). First, one can ask a series of follow-up questions designed to elicit more information about an event, such as the value of stolen property, the extent of injury to the victim, and the like. The implication would seem to be that the real skill of history-taking is in the ability to get useful information about the patient, despite the fact that his/her self-report is probably riddled with factual errors. African American males are no more or less likely to self-report delinquent behavior than white males. Krohn, M.D., A.J. Developmental Psychology 20:1120-1134. Thornberry, and R.M. Lauritsen, J.L. New Report Finds Gaps and Variation in Behavioral Science at NIH, APS Advocates for Psychological Science in New Pandemic Preparedness Bill, APS Urges Psychological Science Expertise in New U.S. Pandemic Task Force. In waves 2 and 3, respondents were asked if they had been arrested or picked up by the police in the last six months. 1957 Differential association and delinquency. If it is too short, it is likely the answers provided on the retest will be a function of memory. This is substantial progress for a measurement approach that began with a half dozen items and a four-category response set. What is a health risk assessment and how do they work? . Crime reports such as the Uniform Crime Report (UCR) collect data on known offenses, crimes that have been reported. Turner, J.T. Osgood, D.W., P. OMalley, J. Bachman, and L. Johnston 1989 Time trends and age trends in arrests and self-reported illegal behavior. New York: Plenum. Crime survey implementation also contributes to initial assessments. Contemporary measures typically cover a wide portion of the behavioral domain included under the construct of crime and delinquency. Some research, especially in the alcohol and drug use area, has found a method effect. This generates a problem for research as well as practice. Two strategies are generally available. Huizinga and Elliott (1986), using data from the NYS, also examined the correspondence between self-reports of delinquent behavior and official criminal histories. Huizinga, D., and D.S. Aquilino and A.J. There are no perfectly valid measures, but some measures are more valid than others. On the one hand, individuals may be reluctant to provide additional self-incriminating evidence after having just been arrested. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations present in article comments are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the views of APS or the articles author. They found that 21 percent of respondents with no arrest history self-reported being arrested. APS regularly opens certain online articles for discussion on our website. 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. For example, Aquilino (1994) found that admission of alcohol and drug use is lowest in telephone interviews, somewhat higher in face-to-face interviews, and highest in self-administered questionnaires (see also Aquilino and LoSciuto, 1990; Turner et al., 1992). What can be done to increase the honesty of responses? In self-reports, prevalence and individual offending frequency were higher, the age of onset was earlier, and the concentration of offending was greater (Farrington et al., 2000:21). 1991 Computer-Assisted Interviewing. During this period of time researchers began to recognize the true potential of the self-report methodology. Tifft 1966 Polygraph and interview validation of self-reported delinquent behavior. He cites one particular Indian culture in which it is considered very important never to give voice to certain negative thoughts; consequently, questions about suicidal ideation are either simply skipped by respondents at very high rates or are not answered frankly. Waldo 1977 Formal and informal sanctions: A comparison of deterrent effects. Despite the expanding applications of this methodology, questions remained about what self-report instruments measure. . Overall, the trends for 81 percent of the NYS offenses are not statistically significant and about half of the MTF trends are. Campbell, S.B. This has enabled researchers to examine the effect of age of onset, to track the careers of offenders, to study desistance, and to apply developmental theories to study both the causes and consequences of criminal behavior over the life course. Pain is not a simple sensory event and is not proportional to tissue damage, reported APS Member Francis Keefe, of Duke University Medical Centers Pain Management Program. Farrington, eds. It is clearly a high-priority one as well. 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. Los Angeles: Kluwer Academic Publishers. 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. A number of studies have assessed the test-retest reliability of self-reported delinquency measures. Depending on what aspect of patient satisfaction is being measured, examples may include responsiveness of staff, clinician communication, technical skill, and hospital environment. For example, comparing the rate of gang fights from wave to wave, Thornberry found that for 67 percent of the comparisons there was a decrease in age-specific prevalence rates, whereas there was an increase in only 20 percent of the comparisons and in 13 percent there was no change. 1993 Life-course-persistent and adolescence-limited antisocial behavior: A developmental taxonomy. Saris, W.E. Lehnen, R.G., and A.J. Self-report data is gathered typically in paper-and-pencil or electronic format or sometimes through an interview. Krohn 2001 The development of delinquency: An interactional perspective. On the other hand, if one has just been arrested for a serious crime like robbery or burglary, admitting to recent drug use may not be considered a big deal. In particular, similar patterns were found for variations in prevalence by age, the level of continuity in commission of offenses, and the relationship between age of onset and later frequency of committing offenses. 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. Of these two basic psychometric properties, the evidence for reliability is stronger. Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features? Development and Psychopathology 5:101-133. The average Yules Q is 0.81 across the 11 waves, and the range is from 0.68 to 0.89. 203-225 in Cross-National Research in Self-Reported Crime and Delinquency, M.W. BETHESDA, MARYLAND-The accuracy and reliability of reports of one's own behavior and physical state are at the root of effective medical practice and valid research in health and psychology. There is one approach that appears to hold great promise audio-assisted computerized interviews, which produce increased reporting of many sensitive topics, including delinquency and drug use. 1986 Reassessing the reliability and validity of self-report delinquent measures. Many people do not enumerate events, even when we might expect the question to lead them to do so. Inclusion of frequency response sets. Frequencies and prevalences for all self-reported behaviours were only reported for the past year at each survey wave in adulthood (age 21, 24, 27, 30, and 33). The Drug Use Forecasting (DUF) project (1990), sponsored by the National Institute of Justice, is an ongoing assessment of the extensiveness of drug use for samples of arrestees in cities throughout the country. They found a surprisingly high degree of concordance between childrens and parents reports about the prevalence of delinquent behavior. 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. To argue that a measure has content validity, the following three criteria must be met. There are two classic ways to assess the reliability of social science measures: test-retest reliability and internal consistency. This paper reviews the history of the third methodself-report surveysassesses its validity and reliability, and compares results based on this approach to those based on official data. Several of these issues are discussed in this section.
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