SOME IMPLICATIONS OF ~ON-REPOR'I:ING AND SELF-REPORTING OF bRIME ON L, RIMINAL JUSTICE RESEARCH

by

Re~ ~ , Harold V ~ , and Harry Allen

V a l i d i t y and r e l i a b i l i t y a re i s s u e s of f u n d a m e n t a l

i m p o r t a n c e i n the i n t e r r e l a t i o n s h i p between da ta and t h e o r y . 1

On the one hand , t h e o r y d i r e c t s i n v e s t i g a t i o n to p a r t i c u l a r

a r e a s of i n q u i r y ; on the o t h e r hand , the v a l i d i t y and r e l i a b i l i t y

of the data thus obtained have a crucially significant impact

on the formulation and verification of theory. The field of

Criminal Justice is no exception; in fact, the study of crime

provides a particularly salient example of problems which

originate in the i~teraction between theory and the data base.

Despite the variety of methods used to gather data, each

of which has been the subject of considerable attention and

discussion in the liZeratuze, 2 the process of formulation

and verification of theory demands the researcher's immediate

handling of these problems. Until students of deviance

address themselves to these issues, the etiological study

of crime and delinquency will continue to be characterized

by inferential leaps and ambiguous constructs.

There are at least four major sources of error implicit

in the study of deviance: (i) the formulation of theory;

(2) empirical test of hypotheses gathered from the theory;

(3) the subsequent reformulation and reconstruction of theory

based on empirical test and the data received; and (4) the

accuracy and representative character of the data per se.

Realistic limitations of time permit our concern in this

paper with only the latter issue.

NON-REPORTING OF CRIME

Criminologists have long been aware that arrest and court

data do not adequately reflect the degree and extent of

deviance, especially of crime and juvenile delinquency, 3 and

that few acts of deviance are actually recorded. The first

major and well-known demonstration of this discrepancy was

the Cambridge-Sommerville Youth Study, 4 which indicated that,

from the 101 subjects in this study, only 1 1/2% of the

known infractions of laws were officially acted upon. Of the

616 serious offenses noted, only 11% were prosecuted. What

often escapes observation is the fact that 44% of these total

offenses were from subjects undetected by official agents~

In the same year, Porterfield 5 administered a questionnaire

to 337 Texas college students and every student admitted to

the commission of at least one of the 55 violational cate-

gories covered by the items of the questionnaire.

In their well-known study, Wallerstein and Wyle 6 asked

1,698 adults if they had ever conunitted any one of 49 listed

offenses. The average number of reported offenses was 18 for

the men and ii for the women, with 64% of the men and 29% of

the women confessing to felonies. Also reported but ignored

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by many theorists was the large proportion of upper and middle-

class respondents who confessed to acts legally constituting

crimes. Bloch and Flynn 7 found that 91% of 340 college upper-

c]assmen from middle-class homes admitted to large number of

offenses, both felonies and misdemeanors.

A recent major statement of the extent of unreported crime

was made by the President's Crime Commission. 8 In particular,

the National Opinion Research Center's national study of crime

victimization surveyed I0,000 households to ascertain (i) if

the respondent or any member of his household had been a victim

of crime during the immediate past year; (2) whether the crime

had been reported; and (3) any reasons for non-reporting.

While the Commission concluded that the data probably under-

estimate the actual amounts of crime, the Type 1 offenses were

all under-reported (with the exception of vehicle theft, but

than only by a small amount), and, in aggregate, it was found

that only about 1 in 8 crimes were reported to the police.

Obviously, a great deal of crime goes officially undetected,

and official records are invalid and inaccurate as a source

of data for testing etiological theorieso 9

SELF-REPORTING OF CRIME AND DEVIANCE

The combined effects of the criticism of official statis-

tics and the obvious implications of non-reported crime inter-

acted to suggest a more valid, reliable, and accurate source

of data for theory testing. Many researchers have followed

the earlier self-reporting leads of Porterfield, and Bloch and

Flynn, in an attempt to fashion an instrument that would

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enable them to test or constr~ct a theory.

Nye and Short, I0 recognizing Lb.. inherent difficulties

of dichotimizing a population into delinquent/non-delinquent

groups according to official judgements, constructed both

a 7- and an ll-item seif~reportln~ instrument which allowed

the respQndents to "confess" anonymously to the frequency

of commission of certain deviant ~cts. This attempt to

measure juvenile deviance as a continuous variable was, they

concluded, both valid and reliable, and would be of inestimable

value in the study of etiology, ghort,ll in an attempt to

test Sutherland's assertion that differential association varies

with the frequency, duration, priority, and intensity of contact

with delinquent peers, constructed an ll-item delinquency scale

which allowed known delinquents to respond on the frequency

with which certain delinquent acts had been committed. The

importance of hiz work lies not so much in testing Sutherland's

theory of differential association (which Short, it has been

argued, operationally re-defined), but in the influence it had

on later researchers.

Nye, 12 addressing himself to the negative correlation of

officially reported crime and social class, asked if the

gradients by social class held true for self-reported delin-

quency as well. Administering a 21-item self-reporting

instrument that allowed the small-town, high school adolescent

respondents to indicate frequency of commission, he found

that there were very few significant relations between social

class and self-reported frequency of delinquent behaviors.

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Akersl 3 reDi~ce~d Nye's study that indicated no association

between social class and self-~eporting of deviant behavior and

confirmed Nye's findings. Akers felt that the main value of

the study, 14

...lies in adding a stronger emphasis to the question mark placed by Nye's findings after those theories which maintain that delinquent behavior is a function of lower-class living or which are based on some as- sumed disproportionate commission of delinqumnt behavior in the lower social strata.

Authorities in the field of criminology at this time were

concluding that official statistics were quite unreliable.

Despite the fact that Eynon 15 was not able to reliably scale

an ll-item Nye-Short scale in a test-retest situation, it was

argued that in the future, criminology would probably find it

necessary to utilize admitted, rather than officially reported,

violations for the study of deviant and criminal behavior. 16

VALIDITY

In the reliance on data from unsigned questionnaires in

the study of deviant behavior, the question of data validity,

one of the mo~t vulnerable aspects of theory testing, must be

raised. 17 Nye and Short built trap questions into their self-

reporting techniques to detect exaggerators, random response

givers, and over conformers, and by eliminating these types

introduced two serious problems into their studies: (i) they

narrowed the possible external generality to their theory and

findings, 18 and (2~ by not investigating the "negative cases"

they left unquestioned the reasons for inaccurate responses.

Clark and Tifft 19 dealt with the validity of anonymous

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questionnaires by instituting data gathered by a polygraph

examination as external validity criteria. Respondents in

a group of college students were collectively administered

a questionnaire that allowed them to indicate the frequency

of participation in a large number of deviant behaviors

(including the 7 items on the Nye-Short scale). Later, in

a private interview setting~ the individual respondent was

allowed to reconsider and change his answers, with the

knowledge that he would be asked to undergo a polygraph

examination on the contents of the questionnaire. During

the polygraph examination, the examiner made any corrections

the respondent indicated (after the polygraph registered

affect). Surreptitious recordings were made of each respon-

dent's answers in a fashion that indicated priority of changes.

The results of this validity study were rather clear-cut:

i. All respondents made changes, and 3/4 of the changes were

in the direction of more frequent deviance (i.e.~ deviance

is under-reported);

2o The validity of the responses to the questions (as measured

by the polygraph as the external criterion source) increased

with approach of the actual polygraph examination, suggesting

that group-administered self-reporting instruments are not

as accurate as might be hoped;

3. The Nye-Short 7-item scale did not "scale" (although there

was a high Spearman rank-order correlation co-efficient (.80);

4. " . . . the errors in reporting represent an attempt to

make reported behavior compatible with perceived group

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norms;"20

5. " . . . there is no relationship between questionnaire

validity (accuracy) and extent of involvemen~ in deviant

behavior;"21

6. Validity studies which utilize external validation, such

as the polygraph, can develop self-reporting items, and

the time has come to operationalize etiologleal (eaus&~)

propositions;

7. Validity studies such as this also have importance for

"assessing the quality of inferential leaps made from

samples to populations and from indicators to concepts

in testing theoretical propositions. ''22

CONCLUSIONS

T h e r e a r e r e a s o n a b l e g r o u n d s f o r a s s u m i n g t h a t u n r e p o r t e d

c r i m e i s e x t e n s i v e . I na smuch as q u e s t i o n n a i r e s a r e t h e m a j o r

s o u r c e o f d a t a f o r s e l f - r e p o r t e d c r i m e and d e l i n q u e n c y and

C l a r k and T i f f t have s e r i o u s l y c h a l l e n g e d t h e v a l i d i t y o f

t h i s d a t a s o u r c e , i t seems t h e s e a r e a s l a c k a v a l i d and

u n e q u i v o c a l b a s i s f o r a s s e s s i n g t h e o r y . I t seems r a t h e r

p o i n t l e s s to p u r s u e e t i o l o g i c a l s t u d i e s u n t i l new, v a l i d , and

r e l i a b l e s o u r c e s o f d a t a a r e a v a i l a b l e f o r t h e o r y c o n s t r u c t i o n

and t e s t i n g .

The c o n t e n t i o n t h a t i n t e r d i s c i p l i n a r y r e s e a r c h i s n e e d e d

in Criminology is strengthened by the Clark and Tifft study,

which offers an instance of fruitful interdisciplinary

collaboration. Other recognized examples of significant

interdisciplinary effort include the works of Pasmanick, et.

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24 and Lindner, e t . al 25 ai.,25 Srole, et. al., ,

S t u d e n t s o f c r i m e and d e l i n q u e n c y mus t b r e a k t h r o u g h t h e

p a r o c h i a l i s m o f u n i t a r y and d o c t r i n a i r e commitment to t h e i r

own disciplines. In particular, sociologists must learn in-

creasingly to utilize and embrace, at least on the micro-level,

the potentials offered by other sciences, especially the life

sciences. An alternative to this proposal would be a large-

scale consecutive birth study; then, perhaps in a quarter of a

century, we might have the data necessary to formulate tentative

etiological conclusions.

FOOTNOTES

i. Claire Selltiz, Marie Jahoda, Morton Deutsch, and Stuart W. Cook, Research Methods in Social Relations, New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966.

. I b i d ; C a r l Backman and P a u l S e c o r d ( e d s . ) , P r o b l e m s in E ' 6 ~ a l P s y c h o l o g y , New York : McGraw H i l l , i 9 6 6 , pp . 5- 14; W. J. Good and P. M. Hatt, Methods in Social Research, New York: McGraw Hill, 1952.

. Thorsten Sellin, "The Uniform Criminal Statistics Act," Journal of Criminal Law~ Criminologyp and Police Science, Vol. 40, #6 (1950)p. 685; Ronald H. Be attie, "Problems of Criminal Statistics in the United States," Journal of Criminal Law t Criminology, and Police Science, Vol. 46 (July, 1955), pp. 178-186; Peter P. Lejins, "Uniform Crime Reports"; The Michigan Law Review, Vol. 46, #6 (April, 1966), pp. 1011-1030; Roland J. Chilton, Persistent Problems of Crime Statistics. Paper presented at the 1966 meeting of the American Sociological Association in Miami.

. Fred J. Murphy, Mary M. Shirley, and Helen Witmer, "The Incidence of Hidden Delinquency," The American Journal of Orthopsychiatr[, Vol. 16, #4, October, 1946, pp. 686-696.

. Austin Porterfield, Youth in Trouble (Austin: man Foundation, 1946), p. ~8.

Leo Potish-

. James S. Wallerstein and Clement J. Wyle, "Our Law-Abiding Law-Breakers," Probation, Vo:l. 25 (April, 1947), pp. 107- 112.

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. Herbert Bloch and Frank Flynn, Delinquencz: The Juvenile Offender in America Todd [ (New York: Random House, 1956), pp. 11-14.

.

.

The President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Admini- stration of Justice, The Challen~e of Crime in a Free

, (Washington, O. S. Government Printing Office, p. 20-22.

This finding further invalidates Tappan's position that only adjudicated criminal or delinquents are properly the subject of sociological inquiry. Paul W. Tappan, "Who Are the Criminals?" American Sociolg~ica ! ReYiew, Vol. 2 (February, 194~) pp. 96-102,

I0. F. Ivan Nye and James P. Short, Jr., "Scaling Delinquent Behavior," American Sociological Review, Vol. 22, #3, June, 1957, pp. 326-351.

ii. James s Short, ~erential Associa~onand Delinquency, Social Problems, Col. 4, #5, 1957, pp. 233-259.

12. F. Ivan Nye, Famil Z Relationships and Delinquent Behavior, New York; Wiley, 1958, pp. 24-31. "

15. Ronald L. Akers, "Socio-economic Status and Delinquent Behavior: A Retest," Journal of Research in Crime and D e!inquencz, Vol. i, #I, January, 1964, pp. 38-46.

14. Ibid., p. 46,

15. Thomas G. Eynon, Factors Related to Onset of Delinquency, Ph.D. Dissertation, The Ohio State University, 1959.

16. James P. Short, and F. Ivan Nye, "Extent of Unrelated Delinquency. Tentative Conclusions," Journal of Criminal Law. Criminology t and Police Science, Vol. 49, November 195w pp. 296-302. See also, Russell R. Dynes, Alfred C. Clark, Simon Dinitz, and Iwao Ishino, Social Problems; New York: Oxford University Press, 1964, p. 45~; Walter Reckless, The Crime Problem, New York: Appleton Century- Crofts, 1967, p. 75.

17. Other validity questions deal with attempts to reduce the respondent's concern about the identifiability of his responses and possible consequences of "true confessions." Selltiz, et. al., Chapter 7.

18. Donald T. Campbell, "Pactors Relevant to the Validity of s in Social SettinEs," in Carl Backman and Paul Secord, (eds.) Problems in Socia! PsycholoEy , New York: McGraw-Hill, 1955p pp. 5-14.

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19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

John P. Clark and Larry Tifft, "Polygraph and Interview Validation of Self-Reporting Deviant Behavior," American Sociological Review, Vol. 31, #4, August, 1966, pp. 516- 523, especially footnote 2.

Muzafer Sherif, The Psychology of Social Norms, New York: Harper, 1936~

Op. c i t . , ppo 522.

Ibid,, pp. 523.

Benjamin Pasamanick, Frank Scarpitti and Simon Dinitz, Schizophrenics in the Community, New York, Appleton- Century-Crofts, 1967.

Leo Srole, To S. Langner, S. T. Michael, Mo K. Opler, and T. A. C. Rennie, Mental Health in the Metropolis: the Midtown Manhattan St udz, New YorK: McGraw Hill, 1962.

Lewis Lindner, Harold Goldman, Simon Dinitz, and Harry Allen. "An Anti-social Personality Type with Cardiac Lability,"Archives of General Psychiatry, 1970, Vol. 23, pp. 260-267.

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