SELF-REPORTED DELINQUENCY - RESULTS FROM AN INSTRUMENT FOR NEW-ZEALAND
SELF-REPORTED DELINQUENCY - RESULTS FROM AN INSTRUMENT FOR NEW-ZEALAND
复制标题
DOI：
10.1177/000486588802100405
复制
发表时间：
1988-12-01
影响因子：
2.7
通讯作者：
SILVA, PA
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
MOFFITT, TE;SILVA, PA
对警方或法庭记录的官方数据在研究反社会行为发展过程中的有效性的担忧（Beattie，1955;塞尔林，1951）导致在20世纪50年代末探索犯罪数据的替代来源。肖特和奈（Short and Nye，1958年）发表了第一份关于系统使用自我报告方法来衡量违法行为的报告。随后，大量的工作已经建立了对自我报告方法的一般可靠性和有效性的信心（法林顿，1973; Hardt和Peterson-Hardt，1977; Hindelang，Hirschi和Weis，1981; Hood和Sparks，1970），尽管仍然建议在单个仪器中评估这些参数（Hirschi，Hindelang和Weis，1980）。关于自我报告的犯罪行为的相关性的研究已经很多了（Elliott和Voss，1974; Empey和Erickson，1966; Hindelang，Hirschi和Weis，1979; West和法林顿，1977）。今天，自我报告调查已经取代了官方记录搜索作为青少年犯罪研究的选择措施。人们之所以偏爱自我报告方法，有几个原因。官方犯罪记录只占所犯罪行的一小部分。它们不是主体犯罪行为的直接指标，但也是执法部门对嫌疑犯的反应的一种功能，这种反应已被证明在某些方面是有偏见的（Hood和Sparks，1970年）。这种偏见表明，在估计人口中违法行为的真实频率和分布方面，官方措施不如自我报告措施准确。官方记录也不适合发展或检验有关犯罪行为的理论，因为它们不能根据犯罪的真实比率对受试者进行准确的分类。胡德和斯帕克斯指出，“通过废除犯罪者和非犯罪者之间的人为二分法（根据这种二分法，所有后者都被假定为‘无辜’），他们[自我报告措施]导致了犯罪作为变量的概念，从而导致了犯罪的发展衡量个人参与犯罪的规模.“（1970年：第46页）。通过自我报告研究，可以对被正式列为违法者的违法者和逃脱侦查的违法者进行重要的比较（Moffitt和Silva，1987年）。在研究人群不太可能产生太大的变化时，官方的措施是标准，如非常年轻，女性，或农村人口，自我报告的工具可以充分利用犯罪行为的变化。特定的理论预测可以通过定制自我报告工具的项目内容来直接测试，以评估所关注的违法行为。
Concerns about the validity of official police or court record data for studying the development of antisocial behaviour (Beattie, 1955; Sellin, 1951) lead to exploration of alternate sources of delinquency data in the late 1950s. Short and Nye (1958) published the first report of systematic use of the self-report method of measuring delinquent behaviour. Subsequently, much work has established confidence in the general reliability and validity of the self-report method (Farrington, 1973; Hardt and Peterson-Hardt, 1977; Hindelang, Hirschi and Weis, 1981; Hood and Sparks, 1970), although evaluation of these parameters in individual instruments is still advised (Hirschi, Hindelang and Weis, 1980). Studies of the correlates of self-reported delinquency have become numerous (Elliott and Voss, 1974; Empey and Erickson, 1966; Hindelang, Hirschi and Weis, 1979; West and Farrington, 1977). Today, self-report surveys have supplanted official record searches as the measure of choice in studies of juvenile delinquency. There are several reasons for this preference for the self-report method. Official crime records represent only a relatively small proportion of committed offences. They are not a direct indicator of the offending behaviour of subjects, but are also a function of law enforcement responses to suspected offenders, responses which have been shown to be biased in certain ways (Hood and Sparks, 1970). This bias suggests that official measures are not as accurate as self-report measures for estimating the true frequency and distribution of delinquent acts within a population. Nor are official records appropriate for developing or testing theories about delinquent behaviour, because they cannot accurately classify subjects based on their true rates of offending. Hood and Sparks noted that," By abolishing the artificial dichotomy between delinquents and non-delinquents under which all the latter are presumed'innocent', they [self-report measures] lead to the conception of delinquency as a variable and thus to the development of a scale on which to measure individuals' involvement in delinquency..."(1970: p 46). Self-report studies allow the important comparison of delinquents who have been officially labelled as delinquent with those who have escaped detection (Moffitt and Silva, 1987). In research populations unlikely to yield much variation when official measures are the criterion, such as very youthful, female, or rural populations, self-report instruments can tap adequate variation in delinquent behaviour. Particular theoretical predictions may be directly tested by tailoring the item content of self-report instruments to assess the delinquent behaviours of concern.