Below are the first 10 and last 10 pages of uncorrected machine-read text (when available) of this chapter, followed by the top 30 algorithmically extracted key phrases from the chapter as a whole.
Intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text on the opening pages of each chapter.
Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.
Do not use for reproduction, copying, pasting, or reading; exclusively for search engines.
OCR for page 1
1
Issues in the Measurement of
Criminal Careers
Joseph G. Weis
Between 1850 and 1900, each decen-
nial census in the United States included
a question on mortality that simply asked
the respondent to report the number of
household members who tract died dur-
ing the past year. One would assume that
a death in one's family would be of suffi-
cient significance and salience that it
would be reported accurately. However,
a comparison of the census estimates of
mortality with the number of deaths offi-
cially registered showed an "uncleresti-
mation of deaths amounting to over 50
percent" (Shryock, Siegel, and Associ-
ates, 1975:3921. The survey estimate of
mortality was consiclered so flawed and
unreliable that the practice was discon-
tinued at the turn of the century." About
Joseph G. Weis is director of the Center for Law
and Justice and associate professor of sociology,
University of Washington.
The author is grateful to Jeanne Kleyn, Margie
Ramsdell, George Bridges, Elizabeth Loftus, Lynn
Frandsen, Kris Jones, and James McCann for their
suggestions, assistance, and support in preparing
this paper.
iImproved record-keeping and survey tech-
niques have reduced the rate of underreporting, but
1
70 years later questions that asked
whether a respondent hac] been the vic-
tim of a variety of crimes were acIded to
census surveys. The earliest pilot na-
tional victimization survey reported that
more than 50 percent of victimizations
are not reported to the police, which sug-
gests that the official records of crime
underestimate the volume of crime (En-
nis, 1967~.
The juxtaposition of Me two underesti-
mations highlights two major issues in the
measurement of crime- the adequacy of
official records as measures of phenom-
ena and We apparent discrepancy in esti-
mates of the amount and distribution of
crime generated by different measure-
ment me~ods. The resolution of these
issues in Me measurement of crime has
not been as easily accomplished as in the
there remain substantial differences between sur-
vey and official-record estimates of mortality. For
example, a one-time 1962 comparison ofthe number
of deaths reported in a quarterly census household
survey and the number of officially registered
deaths shows survey underreports of approximately
21 percent + 7 (Shryock, Siegel, and Associates,
1975:392).
OCR for page 2
2
measurement of mortality. For example,
the substantially Tower estimates of mor-
taTity produced by using survey tech-
niques were iclentifiecI as the source of
discrepancy and the survey was aban-
donec3 because of confidence in the rela-
tively complete sample of deaths con-
tained in official mortality records. But
the substantially higher estimates of
crime generates! by victimization sur-
veys, as well as by self-reports of criminal
involvement, have not been attributed
solely to the survey measures because of
the selective sample of crimes and crim-
inals represented (i.e., underrepresentec3)
in official crime records. In fact, instead of
one measure being considered clearly su-
perior to another, the different measures
of crime have come to be viewed by many
as competing approaches, and each has
its champions. Some see the potential for
complementary measures of crime, each
tapping somewhat different but overIap-
ping domains of the phenomenon.
To date, this battlegrounct of competing
. . . ~. ~
CRIMINAL CAREERS AND CAREER CRIMINALS
research, but they are complicatect and
exacerbated by temporal change and the
apparently unique characteristics of seri-
ous, chronic offenders. Unfortunately,
only one study has addressed the valiclity
and reliability of measures in research on
criminal careers (among a sample of adult
prisoners) and that compared two meth-
ods of measuring criminal behavior, of-
ficial records and self-reports (Marquis
and Ebener, 19811. There is not a rich
literature available on alternative ap-
proaches to measuring individual offend-
ing patterns or on ways to resolve appar-
ent discrepancies among measures in
estimates of criminal career parameters or
their correlates.
The purposes of this paper are, first,
to describe briefly the alternative ap-
proaches to the measurement of criminal
careers, particularly self-reports and off?~-
cial records; second, to discuss the actual
and potential sources of bias and (listor-
tion in the measures of parameters and
correlates and their effects on the conver-
perspechves has been confined almost gence or discrepancy of estimates; and,
exclusively to research on juvenile clelin- third, to propose some research strategies
quency, which has been characterized by for improving the measurement of crimi-
cross-section designs and local samples nal careers to increase the convergent
within which serious offenders, minori- validity among the different measures of
ties and the economically clisacivanta~ed individual offending patterns and to im-
prove their capacity for reciprocal adjust-
ment or calibration. Theory construction,
policymaking, and program implementa-
tion and evaluation can be better in-
formecl by convergent than discrepant
sources of information on the basic facts
are underrepresented. With the recent
interest in the extent to which criminal
career research can inform crime control
policy, the field of controversy has been
broadenecI. The basic facts of criminal
careers are either unknown or unclear.
The parameters of criminal involvement
over time prevalence, indiviclual of-
fending rates, patterns of criminal behav-
ior, and duration of involvement-and
the correlates of those parameters have
not been specified, due in part to the
paucity of rigorous research in the area
and the concomitant unresolved mea-
surement issues. All the problems regard-
ing the validity and reliability of mea-
sures of crime apply to criminal career
ALTERNATIVE MEASUREMENT
APPROACHES
Five basic alternative approaches to
the measurement of crime produce data
that may be useful, directly or indirectly,
in measuring individual offending pat-
terns: official crime records, self-reports
of criminal behavior, reports of personal
OCR for page 3
ISSUES IN THE MEASUREMENT OF CRIMINAL CAREERS
victimization, direct observations, and in-
formant reports. It is clear that the most
viable and useful alternatives for n~easur-
ing individual offending patterns are offi-
cial records and self-reports. One group of
criminal career researchers considers
bow as necessary, and self-reports, in
particular, as "essential" (Greenwood,
1979:43~4) for measuring the frequency
of individual criminal involvement ant!
the relationship between offenses com-
mittec! ant] offenses that result in criminal
justice system processing.
Victimization, observation, and infor-
mant measures of crime are more indirect
in their generation of estimates than the
two other measures and have limited ap-
plications in criminal career research. In
general, they tend not to measure the
parameters and correlates of criminal be-
havior as comprehensively or directly,
and they suffer from having somewhat
unique or narrow sample characteristics.
Victimization surveys are victim based,
rather than offender based, ant! conse-
quently provide only indirect estimates of
parameters and correlates at the aggre-
gate level for a small subset of basically
personal crimes and an even smaller sub-
set of victimizer (or offencler) characteris-
tics (Hinclelang, Gottfredson, and Garo-
falo, 19781. Perhaps most important, the
fact that the results of victimization sur-
veys cannot be compared with other data
sources at the inclividual-offender level is
the most critical weakness of using vic-
timization surveys in criminal career re-
search. Direct observation studies, on the
other hand, particularly if clone within a
prospective longitudinal design and car-
ried out for a number of years, are better
able to measure indiviclual-leve! parame-
ters and correlates than victimization sur-
veys. But, unfortunately, they typically
use small, selective samples of high-risk
juvenile subjects whose behavior is not
representative of serious crime happen-
ing in natural settings or out "on the
3
street." As for informant reports, the most
severe limitation is that informants can
only report on others whom they know
and observe ~lirectly or hear about indi-
rectly. The sample, therefore, is very lim-
ite~1 and selective.
Official-recorc] data are adequate for es-
timates of of Acid prevalence and indivic3-
ual offending rates, pattems, and dura-
tion. In fact, as a measure of crime mix,
crime switching, and duration, official
records are probably more useful than
self-reports, primarily because time mark-
ers are incorporates! in the records, which
permits relatively accurate estimation of
official onset and termination and of the
sequence of changes in offenses of rec-
ord. However, official data are not as ad-
equate as measures of the correlates ant]
determinants of parameters, simply be-
cause many of the important pieces of
information on the social, demographic,
economic, and psychological characteris-
tics of offenders are not routinely, system-
atically, or accurately collected. This,
however, is one of the strengths of self-
report surveys, which can collect a great
variety of rich etiological and descriptive
information along with the reports of per-
sonal involvement in criminal behavior.
Self-reports are also more adequate mea-
sures of prevalence and in(liviclual of-
fencling rates than official data but are
weakest as a basis for studying patterns of
involvement and duration, particularly
within the typical cross-section study de-
sign. Respondents have rlifficulty in re-
membering and dating onset, termination
is (by definition almost immeasurable,
and respondents have even more cliffi-
culty recalling the sequences of a variety
of offenses.
Official records are necessary to those
agencies responsible for crime control;
they constitute the standard extemal val-
idation criterion to which other measures
are compared and are the only continu-
ous, lifelong recorc! of criminal involve
OCR for page 4
4
meet. Self-reports typically cover much
shorter time spans than official records,
although they provide the potential for
long-term measurement of a variety of
samples. More importantly, they provide
more detailed and richer information on
an indiviclual offender's involvement in
crime and on other characteristics of de-
scriptive and etiological interest.
In sum, official and self-report mea-
sures best meet the needs of criminal
career research. They measure more com-
prehensively and systematically the pa-
rameters and correlates of individual of-
fending patterns over time for serious
crimes (e.g., robbery, burglary, assault,
drug dealing, auto theft, larceny), can be
compared more easily and directly with
each other on an individual-off6nder ba-
sis, and, therefore, inform crime control
policy regarding the serious, chronic of-
fender. Taken together, they are at the
heart of the controversy over the question
of convergence and discrepancy in esti-
mates of correlates of crime produced by
different measurement approaches. The
issue is whether official records and self-
reports of criminal behavior generate sim-
ilar distributions and correlates of crime.
Are the two measures consistent or incon-
sistent in their representations ofthe gen-
eral characteristics of crime anct crimi-
nals?
The answers to the questions above are
very important for two reasons. First, the
implications for theory, policy, and pro-
grams will reflect the convergence or dis-
crepancy of crime measures~iscrepant
correlates suggest different strategies,
while convergent correlates support com-
plementary strategies and confirm infor-
mation on the facts of crime. Second, as
the convergence in the estimates of cor-
relates approaches unity, one measure
can be subshtutec! for the other (Nettler,
1974:8~90~. Of course, this is unlikely,
but if there is "apparent" and "sufficient"
convergence, the correlates-or charac-
teristics of offenders and offenses-could
CRIMINAL CAREERS AND CAREER CRIMINALS
be taken into account to estimate param-
eters of criminal careers, particularly
prevalence ant! incliviclual offending rates
(Chaiken, Rolph, and Houchens, 1981:
141. That is, the use of one measure to
calibrate the other is enhancer! with con
vergence.
CONVERGENCE OR DISCREPANCY
IN ESTIMATES
In general, there is surprising consis-
tency in the descriptions of the most im-
portant correlates of crime based on of-
ficial crime records and self-reports of
criminal involvement. Indeed, there are
fewer discrepancies than one might ex-
pect, given the severe criticisms that have
been leveled against each method of
measurement. In fact, among the major
sociodemographic and etiological corre-
lates of crime, only one is clearly discrep-
ant in its correlation with the two mea-
sures race-and one may or may not be
discrepant social class. The only other
apparently discrepant correlation is for a
variable that has not been treated in the-
ory or research as a major correlate
pulse rate (Farrington, 1983).~ The re-
mainder of the major correlates are con
~Farrington (1983:15) reports that convicted
youths tend to have low pulse rates, especially if
they are violent offenders, but that low pulse rate
does not predict high rates of self-reported violent
behavior, even though convictions and self-reports
of violence are significantly related. A possible ex-
planation of this discrepancy could be that con-
victed juvenile criminals, particularly those con-
victed for serious crimes of violence, are more cool
and callous than other respondents, who may not be
as hardened by experience with the criminal justice
system. They may simply be more likely to deceive
and underreport involvement in crimes of violence
and, therefore, attenuate the correlation. The situa-
tion may be somewhat analogous to the cool, hard-
ened criminal "beating" a lie-detector test. And we
know from empirical research that those who are
most involved in the most serious crimes and who
have official records are most likely to give invalid
responses and underreport (Hindelang, Hirschi,
and Weis, 1981:212-214).
OCR for page 5
ISSUES IN TTIE MEASUREMENT OF CRIMINAL CAREERS
vergent or very similar in their relation to
official ant] self-report measures (Hincle-
lang, Hirschi, and Weis, 1981~.
Only a limited number of studies allow
the kinds of direct comparisons of official
ant! self-report data on indivicluals in the
same sample that are necessary to address
adequately the issue of convergence or
discrepancy in the correlates of crime.
However, among those studies, the esti-
mates procluced by official or self-report
measures are largely consistent for sex
(see Hindelang, Hirschi, and Weis, 1981:
137-155 for an extensive review), age
(Farrington, 1983; Langan and Far-
rington, 1983:530-531), school perform-
ance ant] achievement, intellectual abil-
ity and general competence, delinquency
of friends or peers, poor family supervi-
sion, and other major correlates that have
been identified as etiologically important
(West and Farrington, 1977; Hinclelang,
Hirschi, and Weis, 1981:199-207; Far-
rington, 1982~.3 The two major correlates
about which there is some controversy,
social class ant! race, provide clues about
the differential validity and reliability
that may be responsible for the discrepant
anct, hence, divergent estimates of crimi-
nal career parameters.
3For each of the major correlates for which there
is no apparent discrepancy in the correlation be-
tween itself and official and self-report measures of
crime, there may be inconsistencies in correlations
across but, typically, not within subgroups of re-
spondents. For example, the relation of school per-
formance, whether measured by official grade aver-
age, achievement test, or self-report of performance,
is consistently inverse with official and self-reported
crime (see Glucck and Glucck, 1950; Jensen, 1976;
Hindelang, Hirschi, and Weis, 1981:19~202).
However, for some respondents, specifically black,
male official delinquents, even though there is an
inverse relation between self-reports of grades and
official and self-reported delinquency, both correla-
tions are lower than should be expected. They are
not discrepant by method of measurement, but the
correlations produced by each are lower than ex-
pected because of the apparent diminished validity
of self-reports, for both grades and delinquent be-
havior, among members of this subgroup.
S
Social Class
Most research on the relation between
social class and crime does not assess the
issue. Rather, it assumes that there is a
strong inverse relation between class and
"official" delinquency and then compares
self-report estimates with this established
"thoroughly clocumentec3" fact (see Gor-
clon, 1976~. This relationship was es-
tablishec! with ecological correlations,
which, as is well known, tend to overes-
timate inclivi(lual-level correlations sub-
stantially the "ecological fallacy" (Rob-
inson, 1950; Hannan, 1971~. In addition,
most of the studies relied on one measure
of crime, either official ciata or self-
reports, which precludes a direct compar-
ative assessment of the correlations gen-
eratec3 by each method of measurement.
The finding of no important relation-
ship between incliviclual-level measures
of class an(1 self-reportecl crime is also a
well-establishec1 and thoroughly (locu-
mentecl fact, one that has been replicated
by many self-report studies (Short and
Nye, 1958; Akers, 1964; Gold, 1970;
Hinclelang, Hirschi, and Weis, 1981~.
Given the (different facts about social class
and crime that are generated by official
and self-report measures, there are Togi-
cally only two ways to bring them into
convergence. The first approach implies
that, since there is little doubt about the
inverse relationship between official
crime and class, self-reports are defective
and, if improved technically, would] also
show an inverse relationship win class
(Elliott and Ageton, 1980), hence conver-
gence. The second approach implies that,
since there is little doubt about the find-
ing of no important relationship between
self-reporte<1 crime and class, official
measures are suspect but, if the problem
was corrected, they would also show no
relationship with crime (Hinclelang,
Hirschi, and Weis, 1979), hence conver-
gence. The relevant empirical question,
then, is: what is the inclividual-level rela
OCR for page 6
6
tionship between social class and official
and self-reportecT crime?
Two meta-analyses of the cIass-crime
relationship come to opposite conclu-
sions regarding the correlation between
class and official crime measures. Tittle,
Villemez, and Smith (1978) report no im-
portant relationship, claiming it to be a
myth in criminology. In a later review
Braithwaite (1981) concludes that there is
some evidence to support an official
crime-cIass correlation. Examining those
studies that use inclividual-leve! official
data only (Havighurst, 1962; Hathaway
and Monachesi, 1963; Polk, Frease, and
Richmond, 1974) shows that the relation-
ship between social class and official cle-
linquency is weakly negative to nonexis-
tent (Hindelang, Hirschi, and Weis,
1981: 187-188~. A more recent Tongitudi-
nal study of a cohort of 7,719 boys in
Stockholm (Janson, 1982) also reports no
important indiviclual-level relationship
between a "famiTy's social position" and a
boy's having a police record.
Many, many more self-report studies
typically also report no significant rela-
tionship between self-reported crime and
class (e.g., DentIer and Monroe, 1961;
Akers, 1964; Hindelang, 1973; Bachman,
O'Malley, and Johnston, 19781. However,
there is a major exception to the apparent
consensus of self-report studies, ancT that
is the recent work of Elliott and Ageton
(1980) ant! Elliott and Huizinga (1983~.
Baser] on analyses of the National Youth
Survey4 probability sample of approxi
4In 1967 the National Institute of Mental Health
sponsored the first of a relatively regular series of
national youth surveys of a representative sample of
juveniles for the purpose of estimating the extent
and nature of delinquency and substance abuse in
the United States. The survey was repeated in 1972,
and in 1976 the National Institute for Juvenile
Justice and Delinquency Prevention became a co-
sponsor of an annual survey of the self-reported and
official delinquency of a national probability panel
of youths aged 11-17 in 1976.
CRIMINAL CAREERS AND CAREER CRIMINALS
mately 1,500 youths, they report that
there is a moderate inverse relationship
between class and serious "person
crimes" and serious "property crimes,"
particularly for person crimes among
black youths of Tow socioeconomic status
(Elliott and Ageton, 19801. Later analyses
of the national youth panel for 197~1980
show small-to-moclerate class differences
in prevalence and incidence for serious
crimes, and the relationship is stronger
for incidence than prevalence scales (El-
liott and Huizinga, 19831. Official data
have also been collectecl on the national
youth sample, but they have not yet been
reported in the literature in a direct as-
sessment of discrepancy or convergence.
Of the five major studies reviewed by
Hinclelang, Hirschi, and Weis (1981:
18~193) that have both official and self-
report measures on an inclividual level for
the same sample, all showed convergent
estimates of the correlation between so-
cial class and official self-reported crime
(Reiss and Rhodes, 1961; Hirschi, 1969;
Williams and Gold, 1972; Wolfgang,
Figlio, and Sellin, 1972; Elliott and Voss,
1974~. Only one of the studies showed
convergent estimates of a small inverse
relationship (Reiss and Rhodes, 1961~.
Another stucly, based on the Cambridge
(Englancl) Study in Delinquent Develop-
ment, found an inverse relationship be-
tween social class at age 14 and having an
official conviction record at age 17-20,
but no relation to self-reportecl crime at
age 18 (Farrington, 1979; 1982: 17~.5 This
discrepancy is only one among a much
broacler pattern of finding no important
differences between estimates of a vari
5European, primarily British, studies ofthe class-
crime relationship tend to find an inverse relation-
ship no matter what the measure, in good part
because of the more differentiated, structured, and
rigid class structure that exists in Britain, so that this
finding of "discrepancy'' is somewhat unusual
within the British context (see Belson, 1968;
McDonald, 1969; Bytheway and May, 1971).
OCR for page 7
ISSUES IN THE MEASUREMENT OF CRIMINAL CAREERS
ety of correlates baser] on self-reports and
official records. This apparent cliscrep-
ancy may be interpretable in light of an
important reanalysis of the follow-up in-
terview ciata from the Philadelphia cohort
study (Wolfgang, Figlio, and Sellin,
19721. Thornberry ant! Farnworth (1982)
found no important relationship between
status, as measured primarily by ecluca-
tional attainment, and criminal involve-
ment, whether measured by self-report
interviews or police arrest data, when the
cohort members were juveniles. How-
ever, there was a significant inverse rela-
tionship between status and both official
and self-reportecI crime when the cohort
members were adults. That is, conver-
gent estimates of the status-crime rela-
tionship are produced for juveniles and
adults, even though they are in different
directions. The findings for adults are
particularly important for criminal career
research, because among serious, chronic
offenders the relationships between pa-
rameters and correlates are apparently
different during different stages in career
clevelopment. In other words, the opera-
tion of social class is not the same at age
12 as it is at age 25.
Another major study shows that there is
a very weak to nonexistent relationship
between social class ant! official and self-
reported juvenile crime. More impor-
tantly, the study attempts to identify and
test the substantive and methodological
sources of discrepancy, not only for social
class, but for a number of other variables
that have some empirical and theoretical
importance (Hindelang, Hirschi, and
Weis, 1975, 1978, 1979, 1981; Weis,
1983b). Hindelang, Hirschi, and Weis
(1975, 1979) propose that the apparent
discrepancy between self-report and offi-
cial measures for social class, as well as
for gender and race, becomes "illusory"
when standard but critical methodologi-
cal considerations are taken into account,
particularly comparisons of results by
7
level of measurement and by the domain
(variety), type, and seriousness of crimi-
nal behavior. They content! that, if the
data are properly analyzed by comparing
inclividual-level measures of both official
and self-reportect crime with indiviclual
1 ~ r 1
level measures or class, ant! the types and
r . . 1 .1 .~
seriousness of crimes in both are the
same, the alleged (liscrepancy for social
class is resolved.6 Simply put, one should
not compare apples with oranges. Elliott
ancI Ageton (1980) have recommended
basically the same methodological adjust-
ments; in acIdition they suggest that the
proper analysis of self-report data should
include more attention to scoring and
scaling of items. Specifically, they sug-
gest that the reported frequency of illegal
acts should not be restricted in the scor-
ing of incliviclual incidence of involve-
ment (which is preferred to prevalence)
and that the unique properties anct con-
tributions of indiviclual crimes that may
be related to social class (or other vari-
ables) should not be lost in global scales
of (lelinquency.
Hinclelang, Hirschi, and Weis (1981:
181-198) cTiscovere(1 in a comprehensive
empirical test of these hypotheses that
there is a weak, insignificant, or nonexis-
tent relationship with socioeconomic sta-
tus when one controls for level of mea-
surement and compares in(lividual-level
data on both variables. It seems that no
matter how one measures, scales, or
scores the clata, there are small, typically
negative relations between social class
and juvenile (delinquency. The correla-
tions (~) range from -.01 to -.08 between
occupation of principal wage earner and
the self-report delinquency scales (prev-
alence scales for total, serious, general,
6The same logic, of course, can be applied to
other correlates and has been by Hindelang,
Hirschi, and Weis (1981~; only race proved not to be
amenable to these methodological discrepancy-res-
olution strategies and procedures.
OCR for page 8
8
drug, famiTy-schoo! offense inclexes) and
the total official offenses index (Hincle-
lang, Hirschi, anct Weis, 1981:1961. These
finclings also hold when the additional
suggestions of Elliott and Ageton (1980)
are incorporated in the analysis: that is,
one still finds consistently weak-to-non-
existent relations that at times are in the
wrong direction when one (1) uses their
self-report scales scored for incidence or
the total unrestricted frequency within
the past year; (2) examines each of the
three official delinquency inclexes (police
contacts ever, police contacts nest vear.
juvenile court referral ever); (3) does an
item-by-item analysis of their 69 self-
report items; and (4) examines each of
their (1,2,3) relationships separately with
a variety of indicators of socioeconomic
status, including father's education, fa-
ther's occupation, mother's education,
mother's occupation, father employed,
mother employed, father's socioeconomic
index, and mother's socioeconomic index
(Weis, 1981, 19861.
These results are perplexing because
some rigorous studies report a moderate
inverse relation between social class and
self-reportec3 crime (e.g., Elliott and
Ageton, 1980; Elliott and Huizinga,
1983), while other rigorous studies show
an absent-to-weak inverse relation for
both self-report and official measures
(e.g., Hindelang, Hirschi, anc1Weis, 1981;
Thornberry and Farnworth, 19821. Given
that there are no published or otherwise
available results on a convergent inverse
relationship, except for Reiss and Rhodes
(1961), the conclusion for now is that
there is much more evidence, across a
variety of some ofthe most important data
sets compiled on juvenile crime (e.g.,
National Youth Survey: GoIc3, 1970, and
Williams and GoIc3, 1972; Richmond
youth project: Hirschi, 1969; Philadel-
phia birth cohort study: Thornberry and
Famworth, 1982; Seattle youth stiffly:
Hindelang, Hirschi, and Weis, 1981) that
convergence is more likely to show that
CRIMINAL CAREERS AND CAREER CRIMINALS
there is a weak negative-to-nonexistent
relation between social class ant! both
official and self-report measures of crime.
However, what is disturbing is that the
agrees] stanciarcI methoclological adjust-
ments that shouIcT be applier! to these
data comparisons (same level of measure-
ment, same domain of criminal acts, more
sensitive scoring and scaling proceclures)
do not go far enough in creating some
kind of apparent consensus on the issue
of convergent vaTiclity.
Race
Race is the only major correlate
(Wolfgang and Ferracuti, 1967; Wolfgang,
Figlio, and Sellin, 1972; Curtis, 1974;
Hinclelang, 1978; Blumstein, 1982) for
which the metho(lological adjustments
proposer! by Hindelang, Hirschi, and
Weis (1979), particularly the controls for
type ant! seriousness of offense (espe-
cially violence), JO not make the official
and self-report relations consistent in the
way they JO for sex, social class, and other
important correlates of crime. Official
data historically have implied that blacks
are "more criminal" than whites simnIv
by virtue of their overrepresentation in
the criminal justice system and official
records. Self-reports, on the other hand,
suggest that there is less difference in
both prevalence and incidence of crime
(e.g., GoIcT, 1970; Chaiken and Chaiken,
19821. The discrepancy is so large that
"the range of ratios in self-report samples
restricted to a single sex ... does not
overlap with the range of ratios fount! in
official data.... The very strong relation
between race and delinquency in official
data is not present in self-report clata. In
fact, the self-report relation wouIcl have to
be characterized as weak or very weak,
with a mean black-to-white ratio of less
than 1.1:1 expected on the basis of previ-
ous research" (Hindelang, Hirschi, and
Weis, 1981:159; emphasis in original).
Contrary to expectations that compar
- 1- ~
OCR for page 9
ISSUES IN THE MEASUREMENT OF CRIMINAL CAREERS
ing the more serious and violent crimes
would show race differences of a magni-
tude similar to those represented! in of-
ficial records, the race differences for both
self-report serious-clelinquency scales
and individual items are not very large or
significant. Hindelang, Hirschi, and Weis
(1981) report white-to-black ratios that
approximate 1 for the total prevalence
scale; paracloxically, for the frequency or
incidence scales the ratios are less than 1
on five of their six scales, which implies
more white than black involvement in
crime. These ratios approach unity as one
moves from the less to more serious of-
fenses but do not, as the official-data ra-
tios would suggest, exceed 1. The overall
2:1 black-to-white ratio in the Seattle
study's offlcial-record data is approxi-
matec] by prevalence ratios for self-
reports of some types of face-to-face vio-
lence, for example, carrying a weapon,
hitting a teacher, using a club, gun, or
other weapon to get something, beating
someone seriously enough to send them
to the hospital, robbery, and jumping and
beating someone, as well as for official
reaction, probation, and school suspen-
sion (Hinclelang, Hirschi, and Weis,
1981:16~1691. One might interpret this
to mean that there may be violent-offense
specialization by race, but the frequency
estimates do not support this, for either
scales or individual items; it seems that
either the criminal justice system clis-
criminates substantially against blacks,
particularly males, or that blacks may be
underreporting the extent of their in-
volvement in crime.
Other research on juveniles and, more
surprisingly, on adult prisoners supports
these finclings regarding apparent uncler-
reporting by blacks, particularly mates
with official criminal records. Shannon
(1982, 1983) reports that in the Racine,
Wisconsin, cohort study of the relation-
ship between juvenile and aclult criminal
careers, self-reports of delinquency hac!
little relationship to race, but there was a
9
disproportionate representation of blacks
with official records of police contact.
Black males hacI the most contacts and
most extensive, serious involvement with
the police 75 percent of the black males
had a police contact while a juvenile,
compared with 50 percent of the white
males. It appears that juvenile black
mates may be underreporting their crim-
inal involvement because "while 80 per-
cent of the whites in each cohort either
reported their number of police contacts
consistently with police records or over-
estimatec3 them, only half the blacks re-
ported the number of contacts consis-
tently with the records and the other half
reported fewer contacts in comparison
with official recorcls" (Shannon, 1982:1,
101. Other studies on juvenile crime also
suggest underreporting and potential va-
li(lity problems among black respon-
lents, particularly mates with official rec-
or(ls (Chambliss and Nagasawa, 1969;
GouIcl, 1969; Hirschi, 1969~.7
Intriguing corroborative finclings are
also reported on mate adult prisoners,
including serious, chronic offenders, in
the first (Peterson, Braiker, and Polich,
1981) and second (Marquis and Ebener,
1981; Chaiken and Chaiken, 1982) Rand
surveys of incarcerated felons. Peterson,
Braiker, and Polich (1981:xxii-xxiii, 6(k
65) report that the results of an anony-
mous survey of Califomia prisoners gen-
eratecl "complex" results on race. The
self-reports showed that black inmates
were "less active and dangerous crimi-
nals" than white inmates they were in-
volvec3 in the smallest variety of crimes
and at the lowest reported rates compared
with whites and Chicanos. They also re-
ported less involvement in crimes of vio-
lence. Even when corrections are made
fin a personal communication, Delbert Elliott
indicates that similar underreporting and potential
validity problems among this subgroup were also
appearing in ongoing analyses ofthe National Youth
Survey data.
OCR for page 10
10
for different apparent probabilities of ar-
rest and estimated offense rates by race
(the mocle] of street offenders developed
by Chaiken), differences remain, with the
exception that blacks are shown to be
more involves! in crime than Chicanos.
The interpretation ofthese differences by
race in self-reports and official records,
particularly the apparent underreporting
by black prisoners, is considered "some-
what ambiguous" ant! two possibilities
are offered either blacks do, incleecI,
commit fewer crimes and less frequently
or the criminal justice system is more
likely to imprison blacks, particularly
Tow-rate, occasional criminals. A third
source of the differences is only alluded
to in a footnote-the clifferential reliabil-
ity and validity of self-report responses by
race.
Unfortunately, the first Ranc3 inmate
survey was anonymous, so the self-
reports and official records could not be
validated reciprocally at the incliviclual
level (Peterson, Braiker, and Polich,
1981:2~26, 901. However, Chaiken and
Chaiken (1982:226, 244, 245, 247) and
Chaiken, Chaiken, and Peterson preaches to measuring;indiviclual offencT-
(1982:17) suggest that there may have
been underreporting among some sub-
groups of prisoners in the second Rand
inmate survey, particularly among blacks
and the less educated.8 For example,
there is the "puzzling finding" that blacks
report much lower rates of assault than
whites; but it is also reported that the
responses of blacks are less reliable, i.e.,
have "substantially worse internal qual-
ity," and that "respondents whose survey
responses have poor internal quality tend
estimates of parameters and correlates
anal, ultimately' the convergence of the
CRIMINAL CAREERS AND CAREER CRIMINALS
to report Tow crime commission rates for
the crimes they report committing."
There seems to be consistency in both
inmate surveys regarding the under-
reporting of some subgroups, particularly
black inmates, reacting to lower-than-
expected individual offending rates when
self-reports are compared with official
records.
In short, a number of studies of juve-
nile and aclult offenders report a discrep-
ancy between race and self-reportect and
official crime data, and the discrepancy is
likely explainecl by underreporting on
the self-report instrument rather than by
race discrimination within the criminal
justice system. Therefore, attention neecls
to be turned to the connection between
self-reports and official records and possi-
ble racial and other differences in the link
between the two. In this regard the next
section addresses two questions: What is
the nature ofthe reliability and validity of
the two measures? How c30 they affect
8It is interpreted here as a "suggestion" because
the data on individual offending rates by race could
not be found in Chaiken and Chaiken (1982~. Rela-
tions between race and other variables, including
"intemal quality" and "external reliability" of mea-
sures, are reported extensively, but the distribution
of self-reported individual offending by offense and
race could not be found.
, , v
estimates generated by the two ap
ing patterns?
EFFECTS OF RELIABILITY AND
VALIDITY ON ESTIMATES
Given the apparent underreporting of
criminal involvement in self-report sur-
veys that was iclentifie(1 in a number of
studies ant] its possible contribution to
iscrepant correlations, the focus here is
on the effects of the differential reliability
and validity of measurement approaches
on estimates. Of particular interest are
"response effects" (Suciman an(1 Brad-
burn, 1974) in self-report surveys as pos-
sible sources of bias.9 A brief discussion
9Given the focus of most of the research in this
area and space limitations, other sources of error and
bias, such as processing, sampling, and design, are
OCR for page 11
ISSUES IN THE MEASUREMENT OF CRIMINAL CAREERS
of the current state of the reliability and
validity of self-reports of crime precedes a
more detailed treatment of some of the
more important sources of apparent and
potential distortion and response bias in
self-report measures.
Reliability of Self-Reports of Crime
Although Reiss (1975) is correct that
few self-report researchers have assessed
the reliability of instruments, the evi-
dence shows that the self-report method
is very reliable, ant] that if there is a
problem with this type of measure it is
more likely in the area of validity (Hinde-
lang, Hirschi, and Weis, 1981:841. In
terms of intemal consistency, both self-
reports of juvenile crime (Hinclelang,
Hirschi, and Weis, 1981:81) and of crime
among adult prisoners (Marquis anct
Ebener, 1981; Chaiken and Chaiken,
1982) show "impressive reliability," al-
though there is some evidence of system-
atic variation in intemal consistency by
respondent subgroups among aclult pris-
oners. For example, inmates convicted of
drug dealing "left significantly more
questions blank," and inmates who saw
themselves as a "thief, player, or aTcohol-
ic/cirunk" clid significantly worse on the
intemal consistency of responses. In ac3-
clition, even though there clicI not seem to
be much difference in extemal reliability
(validity) among whites, blacks, or His-
panics (although it was still lower, on the
average, than intemal consistency), the
"summary measure ('percent of bad inter-
nal quality indicators') was worse than
average for black repondents" (Chaiken
and Chaiken, 1982:226, 244~.
Test-retest reliability of self-report data
not addressed directly but only as they relate to
response effects. The limitations of official-record
measures are discussed later; besides, the issue for
official measures is not so much a matter of reliabil-
ity and validity as it is of utility.
11
is also quite good, both for reports of
criminal behavior anct for independent
variables. A small number of studies on
juvenile clelinquency have reported high
test-retest reliability coefficients; the time
between administration of the self-report
instrument ranged from a couple of hours
(Hinclelang, Hirschi, and Weis, 1981:
81-82) to a number of years (Farrington,
1973; Bachman, O'Malley, and Johnston,
19781. These and other studies (DentTer
and Monroe, 1961; Clark and Tifft, 1966;
Belson, 1968; Kulik, Stein, and Sarbin,
1968) show that there is substantial con-
sistency in self-reports of the same crim-
inal acts, but reliability diminishes with
time. In general, the test-retest reliability
coefficients are higher for criminal behav-
ior items than for other items (Elliott and
Voss, 1974; Bachman, O'Malley, and
Johnston, 19781. For example, with a few
hours between tests, the coefficients on
four independent items (mother's educa-
tion, grade-point average, parental super-
vision, and peer delinquency) ranged
from 0.4 to 0.9, but the delinquency items
varied around 0.9 (Hinclelang, Hirschi,
and Weis, 1981:821.
The reliability of alternate forms, using
split-half coefficients, is also impressive.
Elmhorn (1965) reports a coefficient of.86
for 21 delinquency items, and Kulik,
Stein, and Sarbin (1968) report coeffi-
cients ranging from .70 to .92 for five
subscaTes clerivec3 from cluster analysis of
52 delinquency items.
Overall, self-reports are very consistent
in the measurement of crime, in terms of
internal consistency, test-retest stability,
and split-half reliability. There is some
eviclence, however, that there may be
potentially important variation in reliabil-
ity, particularly internal consistency, by
respondent characteristics, with appar-
ently more reliability problems among
both black juveniles and adult offenders,
the less educated, and those with drug
and alcohol abuse in their records. These
OCR for page 41
ISSUES IN THE MEASUREMENT OF CRIMINaL CAREERS
study (Hindelang, Hirschi, and Weis,
1981) and an extencled replication study
that focuses on very similar issues in
measuring violence among a stratified
random sample of criminals, mental pa-
tients, and the general population (Weis
and Bridges, 1983) are available models
for the suggested research. In fact, the
latter sample undoubtedly includes a
number of serious, chronic offenders in
the institutionalized juvenile- and adult-
offender subsamples.
What is proposed is that a sufficiently
large sample of juvenile and aclult seri-
ous, chronic offenders be drawn for
studying within an experimental design
the comparative measurement properties
of two self-report methods (the face-to-
face interview and the nonanonymous
questionnaire) and offlcial-record clata.
Randomization would be built into the
design, each respondent would partici-
pate individually (compared with the
group administration in the Ranct inmate
surveys, for example; Chaiken and
Chaiken, 1982), and all the suggestions
listed above to reduce response effects
wouIct be appropriately taken into ac-
count.
The face-to-face interview would be
the focus of the research, for a number of
reasons. First, the information cannot be
anonymous for research purposes, and
besides anonymity does not seem to af-
fect responses to questions about criminal
behavior (Hindelang, Hirschi, ant] Weis,
19811. Second, there are more nonre-
sponses and missing data on question-
naires than in interviews (Chaiken and
Chaiken, 1982; Suciman and Bradburn,
19821. Third, available research evidence
suggests that the face-to-face interview
may be the most effective method of acI-
ministratior~ for these types of respon-
dents (Bra(lburn and Suciman, 1979;
Marquis anct Ebener, 1981:viii). For ex-
ample, Hindelang, Hirschi, and Weis
(1981) discovered that among those re
41
spondents with the highest rate of under-
reporting- black, male official delin-
quents-reporting was most accurate
during the face-to-face interview. Fourth,
an interview setting, with a competent,
experienced interviewer, provides a
greater clegree of control and flexibility in
eliciting information from the respon-
dent. For example, to cue recall, test va-
liclity of answers, match self-reported
crimes to offenses of record, and establish
the perception of a "knowing" inter-
viewer, it is recommended that the of-
ficial record be used (physically, if appro-
priate) as an integral part ofthe interview.
It can set up "guilty knowledge" ques-
tions, i.e., the interviewer refers to of-
fenses of record, for example, three bur-
glaries, and asks about pertinent vaTi-
dating information: Of the three burglar-
ies you were arrested for, how many were
of houses or apartments? These kincis of
detailed data are extremely difficult to
obtain in other ways. This approach can
also be user! in comparisons of recogni-
tion and cuecI-recall memory of offenses
of record.
A "creep probe" would also be part of
the interview for four purposes: (1) to
collect cletailecl information on offenses to
ascertain face validity and general accu-
racy of answers; (2) to gather data about
other important aspects of the criminal
event (e.g., intent, motive, number of
crime partners, relationship to victim)
that could be comparer! with official dep-
osition statements for crimes that become
offenses of record; this would allow a
crude assessment of the disparity be-
tween a respondent's memory for details
of criminal events and the official version;
(3) probing might also be necessary for
these kinds of respondents simply to get a
relatively normal response pattern (Erick-
son and Empey, 19631; and (4) as sug-
gestec! by Hindelang, Hirschi, and Weis
(1981), to adjust scores on delinquency
items based on corrections made in initial
OCR for page 42
OCR for page 44
OCR for page 45
OCR for page 46
OCR for page 47
OCR for page 48
OCR for page 49
OCR for page 50
OCR for page 51
Representative terms from entire chapter:
criminal behavior
42
reports as a consequence of probing. The
nonanonymous questionnaire ant] a fol-
low-up ranclomized response questioning
or a real or simulated "lie detector" inter-
view woulc] be included in the design to
test these approaches on this type of sam-
ple and provide potential alternatives for
comparisons; it is less expensive to give
respondents a checklist, but the data may
not be as complete or useful.
Due to the nature of the sample, this
kind of experimental design couIc3 also
facilitate a more rigorous assessment of
the effects of the apparently important
respondent characteristics on responses
since serious, chronic offenders personify
those characteristics. In general, this type
of experimental study is the preferred
way to determine the best way to collect
valid and reliable data from serious,
chronic offenders and to validate recipro-
cally data from official records. Other-
wise, we are simply guessing, on the
basis of scarce, ancillary evidence, about
the most effective method of measure-
ment. This is certainly not a firm founda-
tion on which to build theory, make pol-
icy, or c resign programs.
5. Research on the measurement of
criminal careers should treat the im-
provement of measurement as a research
and development enterprise.
For a variety of reasons, the preferred
research clesign in criminal career re-
search is the prospective, longitudinal
study. Its primary purposes are to observe
changes in behavior and correlates in a
cohort. However, there is another pur-
pose that should be considered, and that
is incorporating into the study design a
research and development component on
measurement methods. This could be
done within an existing longitudinal
study or built into one in the future.
There are a number of reasons for pro-
posing that instrument
ISSUES IN THE MEASUREMENT OF CRIMINaL CAREERS
43
lates. And, like the measures, improving record check in which the response inter
the accuracy and quality of the data vat (the time elapsed between the offense
shouIct be a "given" as a research objec- of record and the response to questions
five and constantly monitored. For exam- about it) is sufficiently Tong that memory
pie, what is the differential validity over may be faulty or at least not as accurate as
time of responses based on recognition it could be.
versus recall memory and how floes it In sum, treating the improvement of
effect estimates of criminalcareerparam- measuring criminal behavior as a re
eters? Or, does the magnitude of re- search and development task, incorpo
sponse bias by race vary over time, and rated in a prospective longitudinal study
of the development of criminal careers,
wouIc3 improve substantially the validity
and reliability of measures and, ulti
mately, the ability to describe criminal
career parameters and correlates.
with what implications for measurement?
If the improvement of measures is
treated as a research and clevelopment
task, it also means that one can "tinker" or
try to test different techniques as the
project unfolds. For example, respon-
clents could be trainee! to fill out ledger-
type diaries of their activities and, given
the design, monitored in the process. One
couIcT also use different types of response
categories, recall periods, question spec-
ificity, ant! question length in the survey
instrument, all with the objective of im-
proving response accuracy over time.
Given a cohort sample, the potential ef-
fects of"small changes," such as those in
question worcling, couIcl be clirectly and
accurately assessed. And recall periods
could be "bounded" from wave to wave
of data collection, making the analysis of
temporal changes both easier and more
accurate. The time between waves could
be varied, covering shorter and longer
recall periods, perhaps rotating two or
more subsamples to control for testing
effects.
Finally, one would have Me unique
opportunity to observe the development
of official records as well. If the research
component is designee! so that data are
collected at relatively frequent intervals
from both respondents and records, the
capacity to assess reciprocal validity and
subjects such as clifferential arrest proba-
bilities is enhanced substantially. A rela-
tively contemporaneous record check is
bound to be more accurate and useful for
"triangulation" of results than a reverse
6. Research on the measurement of
criminal careers should assess the
isomorphism of domains of seZf-reported
crimes and official offenses.
There is insufficient and inadequate
information in official records regarding
the characteristics of offenders, as well as
the behavioral referents of the legal cate-
gories of offense. Offenses of record are
the organizational products of a process
that transforms initial criminal behavioral
events that were detected into sanctioned
ancl, therefore, recorcled official offenses
(Black, 19701. The problem for research
on the measurement of criminal careers is
the disparity between the criminal be-
havior and the official offense. To the
extent that there is not a "good fit" behav-
iorally or conceptually between the two,
the implications reverberate throughout
research on valiclity and reliability of both
self report and official measures.
The disparity between what an of-
fencler actually did and what is repre-
sented in the record can affect all compar-
ative validity tests, including reverse
record checks and, ultimately, the conver-
gence or discrepancy of estimates of pa-
rameters and correlates. This is not a
trivial or esoteric problem, but a very
practical problem in comparing the two
methods of measurement. If the units of
44
comparison are not the same, compari-
sons are obviated. We have seen these
difficulties in the reverse-record-check
comparisons ofthe Seattle youth study, in
which self-reported behaviors were
grouped within offense categories to en-
able comparisons, rather than on the basis
of official offenses (lIindelang, Hirschi,
and Weis, 1981~.
To the extent that there is meaningful
disparity, extrapolating from offenses
known to total crime, either within a ju-
risdiction or, more unreliably, across ju-
risdictions, may be more difficult to do
with optimal precision. Even the appar-
ently simple identification of a self-report
item that fits an offense category may not
be that easy (Hindelang, Hirschi, and
Weis, 1981:171-1801. In short, the dispar-
ity between criminal behavior and legal
classification is a critical measurement
problem.
To determine the degree of isomorph-
ism between self-report and official do-
mains, one should investigate the struc-
ture ant] content of official records
(Marquis and Ebener, 1981:viii). More
research is needed on the characteristics
of official-record data: What is the domain
of criminal behaviors that official records
represent? To what extent do the do-
mains of official and self-report data over-
lap? Is the apparent multidimensionaTity
of criminal behavior in self-report data
replicated in official-record data? An-
swers to some of these questions can be
gained through the usual dimensional-
izing procedures, for example, factor and
cluster analysis of official data. Others
require more time-consuming and dif-
ficult data collection and analysis. To get
closer to the domain of criminal behaviors
circumscribed by official records, one
needs to delve deeper than the legal cat-
egories recorded in the active records of
the police department or court. One
should go to the offender's case file for the
much more detailed information given in
depositions by the victim, witnesses, po
CRIMINAL CAREERS AND CAREER CRIMINALS
lice, and offender. This should enhance
the agreement of the two data sources,
provide more accurate information from
which to select self-report items, increase
correlational validity coefficients, make
reverse record checks more precise, and
so on. In short, more research on the
measurement properties of official-record
data is needed, particularly on the degree
to which the conceptual and behavioral
domains of self-report and official mea-
sures are isomorphic. To the extent that
they are not, the complementarily of the
two measures is compromised.
CONCLUSION
Theory, policy, and programs on crim-
inal careers depend on accurate informa-
tion about the characteristics, distribu-
tion, and correlates of criminal behavior
over time. Fortunately, the two most via-
ble approaches to measuring the parame-
ters and correlates of criminal careers,
self-reports and official records, generally
describe the same essential features of
crime and criminals. There is much more
convergence than discrepancy in their
representations of the phenomena. How-
ever, research on measurement proper-
ties, particularly validity and reliability,
shows that both approaches to measuring
crime are still plagued by a variety of
problems and weaknesses. The improve-
ment of self-report and official measures
should be a fixed objective and an ongo-
ing enterprise. The goal should be to
maximize the precision and utility of
measures of the parameters and corre-
lates of individual offending patterns over
time, particularly for serious and violent
crimes. In so doing, the refined measure-
ment approaches may generate more sim-
ilar estimates of parameters but, more
likely and more usefully, should produce
even more convergent estimates of the
correlates of offenses and offenders. With
this knowledge about systematic varia-
tion, adjustments and fine-tuning are
ISSUES IN THE MEASUREMENT OF CRIMINAL CAREERS
more within the realm of possibility, if
not on the basis of current knowledge at
least on the basis of future research. A
number of research strategies have been
described that could improve research on
the measurement of criminal careers and,
therefore, our ability to understand and
address the problem of serious, chronic
criminal behavior.
REFERENCES
Akers, Ronald L.
1964 Socio-economic status and delinquent be-
havior. A retest. Journal of Research in
Crime and Delinquency 1:38-46.
Bachman, Jerald G., O'Malley, Patrick, and
Johnston, Jerome
1978 Youth in Transition, Vol. Vl: Adolescence to
Adulthood: Change and Stability in the lives
of Young Men. Institute for Social Re-
search. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan.
Ball, John C.
1967 The reliability and validity of interview data
obtained from 59 narcotics addicts. Ameri-
canJournal of Sociology 72:65~654.
Belson, William
1968 Development of a Procedure for Eliciting
Information from Boys about the Nature
and Extent of Their Stealing. Survey Re-
search Centre. London: London School of
Economics.
Birnbuam, Isabel M., and Parker, Elizabeth S.
1977 Acute effects of alcohol on storage and re-
trieval. Pp. 99-108 in Isabel M. Birnbuam
and Elizabeth S. Parker, eds., Alcohol and
Human Memory. New York: Ichn Wiley &
Sons.
Black, Donald J.
1970 Production of crime rates. American Socio-
logical Review 35:73~748.
Blackmore, Jane
1974 The relationship between self-reported de-
linquency and official convictions amongst
adolescent boys. British Journal of Cr~mi-
nology 14:172~176.
Blumstein, Alfred
1982 On the racial disproportionality of United
States' prison populations. Journal of Crim-
inal Law and Criminology 73:1259-1273.
Bower, Gordon H.
1970 Organizational factors in memory. Cognitive
Psychology 1:18-46.
Bradburn, Norman M., and Danis, Catalina
1984 Potential contributions of cognitive research
to survey questionnaire design. Pp. 101-129
45
in Thomas B. Jabine, Miron L. Straf, Judith
M. Tanur, and Roger Tourangeau, eds., Cog-
nitive Aspects of Survey Methodology. Re-
port of the Advanced Research Seminar on
Cognitive Aspects of Survey Methodology,
Committee on National Statistics, National
Research Council. Washington, D.C.: Na-
tional Academy Press.
Bradburn, Norman M., and Sudman, Seymour
1979 Improving Interview Method and Question-
naire Design. San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-
Bass.
Braithwaite, John
1981 The myth of social class and criminality re-
considered. American Sociological Review
46:36-57.
Brenner, Michael
1982 Response effects of"rc~le-restricted" charac-
teristics of the interviewer. Pp. 131-165 in
Wil Dijkstra and Johannes van der Zouwen,
eds., Response Behavior in the Survey-later-
view. New York: Academic Press.
Bridges, George
1981 Estimating the effects of response errors in
self-reports of crime. Pp. 59-76 in James A.
Fox, ea., Methods in Quantitative Criminol-
ogy. New York: Academic Press.
1983 An empirical study of error in reports of
crime and delinquency. In Marvin E.
Wolfgang, Robert M. Figlio, and Terence P.
Thornberry, From Boy to Man,from Delin-
quency to Crime. Chicago, Ill.: University of
Chicago Press.
Bridges, George, Weis, Joseph G., and Crutchfield,
Robert
1984 The Measurement of Violent Behavior: Fac-
tors Affecting Estimates of the Prevalence
and Correlates of Violent Behavior. Paper
presented at the American Sociological As-
sociation Meeting, San Antonio, Texas, Au-
gust.
Bytheway, W. R., and May, D. R.
1971 On fitting the "facts" of social class and
criminal behavior: a rejoinder to Box and
Ford. Sociological Review 19:585-607.
Campbell, Donald T., and Fiske, Donald W.
1959 Convergent and discriminant validation by
the multitrait-multimethod matrix. Psycho-
logical Bulletin 56:81-105.
Cannell, Charles F., and Fowler, Floyd J.
1963 Comparison of a self-enumerative procedure
and a personal interview: a validity study.
Public Opinion Quarterly 27:25(}264.
Cannell, Charles F., and Kahn, Robert L.
1968 Interviewing. Pp. 449-487 in Gardner Lind-
zey and Elliott Aronson, eds., The Handbook
of Social Psychology. Vol. I. Reading, Mass.:
Addison-Wesley.
46
Cannell, Charles F., Marquis, Kent H., and Laurent,
Andre
1977 A summary of studies of interviewing meth-
odology. Vital and Health Statistics 69:1-
78.
Cannell, Charles F., Oksenberg, Lois, and Con-
verse, Jean M.
1977 Striving for response accuracy: experiments
in new interviewing techniques. Journal of
Marketing Research 14:306~315.
Cash, William S., and Moss, Abigail J.
1972 Optimum recall period for reporting persons
injured in motor vehicle accidents. Vital and
Health Statistics 50:1~3.
Cermak, L., and Butters, N.
1973 Information processing deficits of alcoholic
Korsakoff patients. Quarterly Journal of
Studies on Alcohol 34: 111~1132.
Chaiken, Jan M., and Chaiken, Mareia R.
1982 Varieties of Criminal Behavior. Santa
Moniea, Calif.: Rand Corporation.
Chaiken, Jan M., Chaiken, Mareia R., and Peterson,
Joyce E.
1982 Varieties of Criminal Behavior: Summary
and Policy Implications. Santa Moniea,
Calif.: Rand Corporation.
Chaiken, Jan M., Chaiken, Mareia R., and Rolph,
John E.
1983 Self Reported Commissions of Crimes:
Comparison of Two Questionnaire Formats.
Santa Moniea, Calif.: Rand Corporation.
Chaiken, Jan M., Rolph, John E., and Houehens,
R. L
1981 Methods for Estimating Crime Rates of In-
dividuals: Executive Summary. Santa
Moniea, Calif.: Rand Corporation.
Charnbliss, William J., and Nagasawa, Richard H.
1969 On the validity of official statistics- a eom-
parative study of white, black, and Japanese
high school boys. Journal of Research in
Crime and Delinquency 6:71-77.
Christie, Nils, Andenaes, Johannes, and SkirbeLk,
Sigurd
1965 A study of self-reported crime. Pp. 8~116 in
Karl O. Christiansen, ea., Scandinavian
Studies in Criminology. Vol. 1. London:
Tavistoek.
Claney, Kevin, and Gove, Walter
1980 Sex differences in mental illness: an analysis
of response bias in self-reports. American
Journal of Sociology 80:205-216.
Clark, John P., and Tiffl, Larry L.
1966 Polygraph and interview validation of self
reported delinquent behavior. American So-
ciological Review 31:516-523.
Coeozza, Joseph J., and Steadman, Henry J.
1974 Some refinements in the measurement and
CRIMINAL CAREERS AND CAREER CRIMINALS
prediction of dangerous behavior. American
Journal of Psychiatry 131(9~: 1012-1014.
Colombotus, John
1969 Personal vs. telephone interviewers' effect
on responses. Public Health Report 84: 77
782.
Costner, Herbert
1975 The Validity of Indicators. Paper presented
at American Sociological Association Meet-
ing, San Francisco, California, August.
Crain, Robert L., and Mahard, Rita E.
1983 The eŁect of research methodology on de-
segregation achievement studies: a meta-
analysis. American Journal of Sociology 88
(51:83~854.
Curtis, Lynn
1974 Criminal Violence National Patterns and
Behaviors. Lexington, Mass.: D. C. [Ieath.
Darley, C. F., Tinklenberg, J. R., Roth, W. T.,
Hollister, L. E., and Atkinson, R. C.
1973 Influence of marijuana on storage and re-
trieval processes in memory. Memory and
Cognition 1:196-200.
DeLamater, John
1982 Response-effeets of question eonter~t. Pp.
1~48 in Wil Dijkstra and Johannes van der
Zouwer~, eds., Response Behavior in the Sur-
vey-laterview. New York: Academic Press.
Dentler, Robert A., and Monroe, Lawrence J.
1961 Social correlates of early adolescent theft.
American Sociological Review 26:73~743.
Dijkstra, Wil, and van der Zouwen, Johannes
1982 Introduction. Pp. 1-12 in Wil Dijkstra and
Johannes van der Zouwen, eds., Response
Behavior in the Survey-Interview. New
York: Academic Press.
Edwards, Allen L.
1957 The Social Desirability Variable in Person-
ality Assessment and Research. New York:
Dryden.
Elliott, Delbert S.
1982 Review essay on Measuring Delinquency.
Criminology 20~3~):527-537.
Elliott, Delbert S., and Ageton, Suzanne
1980 Reconciling race and class differences in
self-reported and o~eial estimates of delin-
queney. American Sociological Review
1:95-110.
Elliott, Delbert S., and Huizinga, David
1983 Social class and delinquent behavior in a na-
tional youth study. Criminology 21: 14~177.
Elliott, Delbert S., and Voss, Harwin L.
1974 Delinquency and Dropout. Lexington,
Mass.: D. C. Heath.
Elmhorn, Kirsten
1965 Study in self report delinquency among
school children in Stockholm. Pp. 117-146
ISSUES IN THE MEASUREMENT OF CRIMINAL CAREERS
in Karl O. Christiansen, ea., Scandinavian
Studies in Criminology. Vol. 1. London:
Tavistock.
Ennis, Philip H.
1967 Criminal Victimization in the United States:
A Report of a National Survey. National
Opinion Research Center. Chicago, Ill.: Uni-
versity of Chicago.
Erdelyi, Matthew H., and Goldberg, Benjamin
1979 Let's not sweep repression under the rug:
toward a cognitive psychology of repression.
Pp. 36~402 in John Kihlstrom and
Frederick I. Evans, eds., Functional Disor-
ders of Memory. Hillsdale, N.~.: Lawrence
Erlbaum.
Erickson, Maynard
1972 The Changing Relation Between Official
and Self-reported Delinquency. Unpub-
lished manuscript. University of Arizona,
Tucson.
Erickson, Maynard, and Empey, LaMar T.
1963 Court records, undetected delinquency and
decision-making. Journal of Criminal Law,
Criminology, and Police Science 54:456-
469.
Farrington, David
1973 Self-reports of deviant behavior: predictive
and stable? Journal of Criminal Law and
Criminology 64:99-110.
1979 Environmental stress, delinquent behavior,
and convictions. Pp. 9~107 in I. G. Sarason
and C. D. Spielberger, eds., Stress andAnx-
iety. Vol. 6. Washington, D.C.: Hemisphere.
1982 Stepping Stones to Adult Criminal Careers.
Paper presented at Conference on the De-
velopment of Antisocial and Prosocial Be-
havior, Voss, Norway, April.
1983 Executive Summary of Further Analyses of a
Longitudinal Survey of Crime and Delin-
quency. Final Report to the National Insti-
tute of Justice. Washington, D.C.: U.S. De-
partment of Justice.
Foster, Herbert L.
1974 Ribbin', Jivin', and Playin' the Dozens: The
Unrecognized Dilemma of Inner City
Schools. Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger.
Fox, Greer L., and Inazu, Judith K.
1980 Patterns and outcomes of mother-daughter
communication about sexuality. Journal of
Social Issues 36:7-29.
Garofalo, James, and Hindlelang, Michael I.
1977 An Introduction to the National Crime Sur-
vey. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of
Justice.
Gibson, H. B., Morrison, Sylvia, and West, D. J.
1970 The confession of known offenses in re-
sponse to a self-reported delinquency sched
47
ule. British Journal of Criminology 10:277-
280.
Glueck, Sheldon, and Glueck, Eleanor T.
1950 Unraveling Juvenile Delinquency. Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Gold, Martin
1966 Undected delinquent behavior. Journal of
Research in Crime and Delinquency 3:27-
46.
1970 Delinquent Behavior in an American City.
Belmont, Calif.: Brooks/Cole.
Goode, William J., and EIatt, Paul K.
1952 Methods in Social Research. New York:
McGraw-Hill.
Gordon, Robert A.
1976 Prevalence: the rare datum in delinquency
measurement arid its implications for the
theory of delinquency. Pp. 201-284 in Mal-
colm W. Klein, ea., The Juvenile Justice Sys-
tem. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications.
Gould, Leroy C.
1969 Who defines delinquency: a comparison of
self-reported and officially reported indices
of delinquency for three racial groups. Social
Problems 16:325~336.
Gove, Walter
1982 Systemic response bias and characteristics of
the respondent. Pp. 167-187 in Wil DiJkstra
and lohannes van der Zouwen, eds., Re-
sponse Behavior in the Survey-laterview.
New York: Academic Press.
Greenwood, Peter
1979 Rand Research on Criminal Careers: Pro-
gress to Date. Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand
Corporation.
Hagenaars, Jacques A., and Heinen, Ton G.
1982 Effects of role-independent interviewer
characteristics on responses. Pp. 91-130 in
Wil Dijkstra and Johannes van der Zouwen,
eds., Response Behavior in the Survey-Inter-
view. New York: Academic Press.
Hamparian, Donna M., Schuster, Richard, Dinitz,
Simon, and Conrad, John P.
1978 The Violent Few. Lexington, Mass.:
Lexington.
Hannan, Michael T.
1971 Aggregation and Disaggregation in Sociol-
ogy. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington.
Hardt, Robert H., and Peterson-Hardt, Sandra J.
1977 On determining the quality of the delin-
quency self-report method. Journal of Re-
search in Crime and Delinquency 14:247-
261.
Hasher, L., and Chromiak, W.
1977 The processing of frequency information.
Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Be-
havior 16:17~184.
48
Hathaway, Starke R., and Monachesi, Elio D.
1963 Adolescent Personality and Behavior. MMPI
Patterns of Normal, Delinquent, Dropout
and Other Outcomes. Minneapolis: Univer-
sity of Minnesota Press.
Havighurst, Robert J.
1962 Growing Up in River City. New York: John
Wiley & Sons.
Hindelang, Michael I.
1973 Causes of delinquency: a partial replication
and extension. Social Problems 20:471~87.
1974 Uniform Crime Reports revisited.Journal of
Criminal Justice 2: 1-18.
1978 Race and involvement in common law per-
sonal crimes. American Sociological Review
43:9~109.
Hindelang, Michael I., Gottiredson, Michael R., and
Garofalo, James
1978 Victims of Personal Crime: An Empirical
Foundationfor a Theory of Personal Victim-
ization. Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger.
Hindelang, Michael I., Hirschi, Travis, and Weis,
Joseph G.
1975 Self-Reported Delinquency: Methods and
Substance. Proposal submitted to the Na-
tional Institute of Mental Health, Depart-
ment of Health, Education, and Welfare,
MH27778. Department of Sociology, Uni-
versity of Washington.
1978 Social Class, Sex, Race and the Discrepancy
between Self-Reported and Official Delin-
quency. Grant Number MH2277~03. Cen-
ter for Studies of Crime and Delinquency,
National Institute of Mental Health, Depart-
ment of Health, Education, and Welfare.
Department of Sociology, University of
Washington.
1979 Correlates of delinquency: the illusion of
discrepancy between self-report and official
measures. American Sociological Review
44:99~1014.
1981 Measuring Delinquency. Beverly Hills,
Calif.: Sage Publications.
Hirschi, Travis
1969 Causes of Delinquency. Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press.
Hirschi, Travis, and Hindelang, Michael J.
1977 Intelligence and delinquency: a revisionist
review. American Sociological Review
42:571~87.
Huizinga, David, and Elliott, Delbert S.
1981 A Longitudinal Study of Drug Use and De-
linquency in a National Sample of Youth: An
Assessment of Causal Order. Boulder, Colo.:
Behavioral Research Institute.
Hunter, Ian M. L.
1957 Memory. Middlesex, England: Penguin
Books.
CRIMINAL CAREERS AND CAREER CRIMINALS
Hunter, I. E., Schmidt, F. L., and Jackson, G. B.
1982 Meta-Analysis: Cumulating Research Find-
ings Across Studies. Beverly Hills, Calif.:
Sage Publications.
Janson, Carl-Gunnar
1982 Delinquency Among Metropolitan Boys.
Department of Sociology. Stockholm: Uni-
versity of Stockholm.
Jensen, Gary F.
1976 Race, achievement and delinquency: a fur-
ther look at delinquency in a birth cohort.
American Journal of Sociology 82:379-387.
Jones, Ben M., and Jones, Marilyn K.
1977 Alcohol and memory impairment in male
and female social drinkers. Pp. 127-140 in
Isabel M. Birnbuam, and Elizabeth S.
Parker, eds., Alcohol and Human Memory.
New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Jones, Edward E., and Sigall, Harold
1971 The bogus pipeline: a new paradigm for
measuring affect and attitude. Psychological
Bulletin 76:349-364.
Klatzky, Roberta L.
1975 Human Memory: Structures and Processes.
San Francisco, Calif.: W. H. Freeman.
Kulik, James, Stein, Kenneth B., and Sarbin,
Theodore R.
1968 Disclosure of delinquent behavior under
conditions of anonymity and nonanonymity.
- Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychol-
ogy 32:506~09.
Langan, Patrick A., and Farrington, David P.
1983 Two-track or one-track justice? Some evi-
dence from an English longitudinal survey.
Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology
74:519-546.
Law Enforcement Assistance Administration
1972 San Jose Methods Test of Known Crime
Victims. Statistics Technical Report No. 1.
Washington, D. C.: U.S. Government Print-
ing Office.
Liebow, Elliot
1967 Tally's Corner: A Study of Negro Street
Corner Men. Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown.
Lin, Nan
1976 Foundations of Social Research. New York:
McGraw-Hill.
LoDcus, Elizabeth F.
1980 Memory. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.
1982 Memory and its distortions. Pp. 12~154 in
A. G. Kraut, ea., The G. Stanley Hall Lecture
Series. Washington, D.C.: American Psycho-
logical Association.
LoDcus, Elizabeth F., and Burns, T. E.
1982 Mental shock can produce retrograde amne-
sia. Memory and Cognition 10:318-323.
Magnusson, David
1966 Test Theory. Boston, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.
ISSUES IN THE MEASUREMENT OF CRIMINAL CAREERS
Maltz, Michael D.
1975 Crime statistics: a mathematical perspective.
Journal of Criminal Justice 3: 177-193.
Marquis, Kent H.
1978 Inferring Health Interview Responses from
Imperfect Record Checks. Santa Monica,
Calif.: Rand Corporation.
1980 Hospital Stay Response Error Estimates for
the Health Insurance Study's Dayton Base-
line Survey. Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand Cor-
poration.
Marquis, Kent H., and Ebener, Patricia A.
1981 Quality of Prisoner Self-Reports: Arrest and
Conviction Response Errors. Santa Monica,
Calif.: Rand Corporation.
McDonald, Lynn
1969 Social Class and Delinquency. London:
Faber & Faber.
Miller, Loren L., and Cornett, Teresa L.
1978 Marijuana: dose elects on pulse rate, subjec-
tive estimates of intoxication, free recall and
recognition memory. Pharmacology, Bio-
chemistry and Behavior 9:57~577.
Miller, Walter B.
1958 Lower class culture as a generating milieu of
gang delinquency. Journal of Social Issues
14:5-19.
Murdock, Bennet B.
1974 Human Memory: Theory and Data. Poto-
mac, Md.: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Nettler, Gwynn
1974 Explaining Crime. New York: McGraw-Hill.
1978 Explaining Crime. 2d edition. New York:
McGraw-Hill.
Nisbett, Richard E., and Ross, Lee
1980 Human Interference: Strategies and Short-
comings of Social Judgment. Englewood
Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall
Nye, F. Ivan
1958 Family Relationships and Delinquent Be-
havior. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Parker, Elizabeth S., and Noble, Ernest P.
1977 Alcohol consumption and cognition filing in
social drinkers. Journal of Studies on Alco-
hol 38: 1229~1232.
Penk, W. E., Brown, A. S., Roberts, W. R., Dolan,
M. P., Atkins, H. G., and Robinowitz, R.
1981a Visual memory for black and white male
heroin and nonheroin drug users. Journal of
Abnormal Psychology 90:486~89.
1981bVisual memory of male Hispanic-American
heroin addicts. Journal of Consulting and
Clinical Psychology 49:771-772.
Perry, D. C.
1976 PCP revisited. Clinical Toxicology 9:33
348.
Peterson, Mark A., and Braiker, Harriet B.
1980 Doing Crime: A Survey of California Prison
49
Inmates. Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand Corpo-
ration.
Peterson, Mark A., and Braiker, Harriet B., with
Polich, Suzanne M.
1981 Who Commits Crimes: A Survey of Prison
Inmates. Cambridge, Mass.: Oelgeschlager,
Gunn and Hain.
Polk, Kenneth, Frease, Dean, and Richmond, F.
Lynn
1974 Social class, school experience and delin-
quency. Criminology 12:8~96.
Quetelet, Adolphe
1833 Recherches Sur le Penchant au Crime aux
Differens Ages. 2d edition. Brussels: Hayez.
Reiss, Albert I.
1975 Inappropriate theories and inadequate meth-
ods as policy plagues: self-reported delin-
quency and the law. Pp. 211-222 in N. J.
Demerath III, O. Larsen, and K. F.
Schuessler, eds., Social Policy and Sociol-
ogy. New York: Academic Press.
Reiss, Albert J., and Rhodes, A. Lewis
1961 The distribution of juvenile delinquency in
the social class structure. American Sociolog-
ical Review 26:72~732.
Robinson, W. S.
1950 Ecological correlations and the behavior of
individuals. American Sociological Review
15:351 ;357.
Savitz, Leonard
1982 Official statistics. Pp. ~15 in Leonard Savitz
and Norman Johnston, eds., Contemporary
Criminology. New York: John Wiley &
Sons.
Schuman, Howard, and Presser, Stanley
1981 Questions and Answers in Attitude Surveys.
New York: Academic Press.
Sellin, Thorsten, and Wolfgang, Marvin E.
1964 The Measurement of Delinquency. New
York: John Wiley & Sons.
Shannon, Lyle W.
1982 Predicting Adult Criminal Careers from Ju-
venile Careers. Iowa Urban Community Re-
search Center. Ames: University of Iowa.
1983 The Prediction Problem As It Applies to
Delinquency and Crime Control. Iowa Ur-
ban Community Research Center. Ames:
University of Iowa.
Short, James F., Jr., and Nye, F. Ivan
1958 Events of unrecorded juvenile delinquency:
tentative conclusions. Journal of Criminal
Law and Criminology 49:296~302.
Shryock, Henry S., Siegel, Jacob S., and Associates
1975 Methods and Materials of Demography.
Rev. edition, Vols. I and II. Washington,
D.C.: U. S. Government Printing Office.
Siegel, Judith M., and Loftus, Elizabeth F.
1978 Impact of anxiety and life stress upon eye
50
witness testimony. Bulletin of the Psycho-
nomic Society 12:479~80.
Skogan, Wesley G.
1977 Dimensions of the dark figure of unreported
crime. Crime and Delinquency 23:41-50.
Sobell, Mark B., and Sobell, Linda C.
1978 Behavioral Treatment of Alcohol Problems:
Individualized Therapy and Controlled
Drinking. New York: Plenum Press.
Strasburg, Peter A.
1978 Violent Delinquents. A Report to the Ford
Foundation. New York: Vera Institute of Jus-
tice.
Sudman, Seymour, and Bradburn, Norman M.
1974 Response Effects in Surveys: A Review and
Synthesis. Chicago, Ill.: National Opinion
Research Center.
1982 Asking Questions. San Francisco, Calif.: Jos-
sey-Bass.
Sykes, Thomas M., Roccolo,
Thompson, Joann K.
1980 An Analysis of Program Needs of Prison
Inmates in Washington State. Olympia,
Wash.: Office of Research.
Talland, George A.
1968 Disorders of Memory and Learning. Har-
mondsworth, England: Penguin.
Thornberry, Terence, and Farnworth, Margaret
1982 Social correlates of criminal involvement.
American Sociological Review 47:50
518.
Tittle, Charles R., Villemez, Wayne J., and Smith,
Douglas A.
1978 The myth of social class and criminality: an
empirical assessment of the empirical evi-
dence. American Sociological Review 43:
643 656.
Tourangeau, Roger
1984 Cognitive sciences and survey methods. Pp.
7~100 in Thomas B. Jabine, Miron L. Straf,
Judith M. Tanur, and Roger Tourangeau,
eds., Cognitive Aspects of Survey Methodol-
ogy. Report of the Advanced Research Sern-
inar on Cognitive Aspects of Survey Meth-
odology, Committee on National Statistics,
National Research Council. Washington,
D.C.: National Academy Press.
Tracy, Paul E.
1981 Analysis ofthe Incidence and Seriousness of
Self-reported Delinquency and Crime. Pa-
per presented at the American Society of
Criminology Meeting, Washington, D.C.,
November.
Tracy, Paul E., and Fox, James A.
1981 Validation of randomized response. Ameri-
can Sociological Review 2:187-200.
Robert L., and
CRIMINAL CAREERS AND CAREER CRIMINALS
Valentine, Bettylou
1978 Hustling and Other Hard Work: Life Styles
in the Ghetto. New York: Free Press.
van der Zouwen, Johannes, and Dijkstra, Wil
1982 Conclusions. Pp. 209-222 in Wil Dijkstra
and Johannes van der Zouwen, eds., Re-
sponse Behavior in the Survey-luterview.
New York: Academic Press.
Voss, Harwin L.
1963 Ethnic differentials in delinquency in Hono-
lulu. Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology
and Police Science 54:322 327.
Warner, Stanley L.
1965 Randomized response: a survey technique
for eliminating evasive answer bias. Journal
of the American Statistical Association
60:63 69.
Weingartner, Herbert, and Parker, Elizabeth S.
1984 Memory Consolidation: Psychobiology of
Cognition. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erl-
baum.
Weis, Joseph G.
1981 One More Time: Social Class and Delin-
quency. Paper presented at the American
Society of Criminology Meeting, Washing-
ton, D.C., November.
1983a Crime statistics: reporting systems and meth-
ods. Pp. 378~392 in Stanford H. Kadish, ea.,
Encyclopedia of Cr~me and Justice. New
York: Free Press.
1983b Delinquency from the self-report perspec-
tive. Pp. 73 88 in Raymond R. Corrado, Marc
LeBlanc, and Jean Trepanier, eds., Current
Issues in Juvenile Justice. Toronto: Butter-
worths.
1986 The elusive correlation: social class and
crime. in Michael R. GottEredson, ea., Posi-
tive Cr7minology: Essays in Honor of
Michael J. Hindelang. Beverly [Iills, Calif.:
Sage.
Weis, Joseph G., and Bridges, George S.
1983 Improving the Measurement of Violent Be-
havior. Proposal to Center for the Study of
Antisocial and Violent Behavior, National
Institute of Mental Health. Department of
Sociology, University of Washington.
1984 A Meta-analysis of Correlates of Violence.
Paper presented at American Society of
Criminology Meeting, Cincinnati, Ohio, No-
vember.
Weis, Joseph G., and van Alstyne, David
1979 The Measurement of Delinquency by the
Randomized Response Method. Paper pre-
sented at the American Society of Criminol-
ogy Meeting, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
November.
ISSUES IN THE MEASUREMENT OF CRIMINAL CAREERS
Weis, Joseph G., Janvier, Richard L., and Hawkins,
J. David
1982 Delinquent Behavior and Its Prevention:
Overview. Washington, D.C.: Office of Juve-
nile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
Weis, Joseph G., and Worsley, Katherine
1983 Measuring Deviant Behavior Among Chil-
dren. Washington, D.C.: Office of Juvenile
Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
West, Donald J.
1973 Who Becomes Delinquent? London: Heine-
mann.
West, Donald J., and Farrington, David P.
1977 The Delinquent Way of Life. London:
Heinemann.
Wetzel, C. Douglas, Janowsky, David S., and
Clapton, Paul
1982 Remote memory during marijuana in
51
toxication. Psychopharmacology 76:278-
281.
Williams, Jay R., and Gold, Martin
1972 From delinquent behavior to official delin-
quency. Social Problems 20:20~229.
Wolfgang, Marvin E., and Ferracuti, Franco
1967 The Subculture of Violence: Toward an In-
tegrated Theory in Criminology. London:
Tavistock.
Wolfgang, Marvin E., Figlio, Robert M., and Sellin,
Thorsten
1972 Delinquency in a Birth Cohort. Chicago, Ill.:
University of Chicago Press.
Zill, Nicholas, Peterson, James L., and Moore,
Kristin A.
1984 Improving National Statistics on Children,
Youth, and Families. Washington, D.C.:
Child Trends, Inc.
