The Inclusion of Parental Interviewers in the Rochester Youth Development Study

罗切斯特青少年发展研究主要由少年司法和犯罪预防办公室资助，是一项关于犯罪原因和相关因素的纵向研究。该项目的设计要求在三年半的时间里，每隔六个月对孩子和他或她的父母进行一次访谈。这项研究的目的是检查与犯罪行为和药物使用的开始、维持和停止相关的因素。亲社会行为也被认为可能会缓冲年轻人的不良职业生涯。这项研究的总体概念框架是基于犯罪的互动理论，该理论侧重于家庭和同伴网络的结构性组织。数据围绕六个一般概念进行组织：对父母的依恋、对学校的承诺、对传统价值观的信仰、与犯罪同龄人的联系、采用犯罪价值观和从事犯罪行为。这笔赠款将支持罗切斯特研究中的第三波家长访谈。由于青少年司法和犯罪预防办公室的支持减少，研究预算减少了27%，这就需要取消第三波家长访谈。这波家长访谈的缺席将大大削弱整个研究努力和小组设计的科学价值，特别是因为8年级或9年级的结束是亲子关系的一个重要转折点，可能与后来的犯罪有关。国家科学基金会的贡献将恢复家长访谈的数据收集。父母访谈的使用在犯罪研究中是不寻常的，并允许直接检查互动和社交的影响。对父母的访谈将使调查人员能够检查这样的问题，如对父母的依恋是否以及何时起到抑制反社会行为的作用，以及反社会行为是否在不同的育儿类型中统一影响依恋。这项研究不仅将为其他人提供丰富和独特的数据集以供二次分析，而且将大大有助于关于青少年犯罪及其原因的科学知识和开明的公共政策。

The Rochester Youth Development Study, funded primarily by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, is a longitudinal study of the causes and correlates of delinquency. Using a sample of 1,000 youth that over-represents individuals at high risk for serious delinquent careers, the design of the project calls for interviews of the child and one of his or her parents at six-month intervals over a three-and-a-half year period. The purpose of the research is to examine the factors associated with initiation, maintenance, and cessation of delinquent behavior and drug use. Pro-social behaviors are also identified that potentially buffer youth from delinquent careers. The overall conceptual framework for the study is based on an interactional theory of delinquency that focuses on the structural organization of family and peer networks. Data are organized around six general concepts: attachment to parents, commitment to school, belief in conventional values, associations with delinquent peers, adopting delinquent values, and engaging in delinquent behavior. This grant will support wave three of the parent interviews in the Rochester study. Due to reductions in support from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the study budget was reduced by 27 percent, which necessitated eliminating wave three of the parent interviews. The absence of this wave of parental interviews would substantially weaken the scientific value of the overall research effort and the panel design especially since the end of 8th or 9th grade is an important transition point in parent-child relationships that may be associated with later delinquency. The NSF contribution will reinstate the parent interviews to the data collection. The use of parental interviews is unusual in delinquency research and permits a direct examination of interactional and socialization effects. The interviews with parents will enable the investigators to examine such issues as whether and when attachment to parents operates to inhibit antisocial behavior as well as whether antisocial behavior affects attachment uniformly across different parenting types. Not only will the study provide a rich and unique data set available to others for secondary analysis but it will contribute significantly to scientific knowledge and enlightened public policy about delinquency and its causes.