Abstract
The ISRD-2 as a comparative study of youth crime and victimization has two distinguishing features: (1) the rather large number of participating countries and (2) the explicitly standardized comparative design. There is no question that an explicit comparative design has many advantages over other designs. Yet, the cross-national standardized approach presents serious challenges and problems, methodologically as well as logistically. Some of these challenges we anticipated, some of them we did not. In a sense, because of its ambitious comparative design, our study has been “a work in progress” from the beginning – and continues to be so even at the stage of data analysis and – interpretation. The degree to which we have succeeded in achieving the goals of our study (i.e., to describe the cross-national variability in the prevalence and incidence of delinquency and victimization; to test for national differences in the theoretical correlates of delinquency and victimization; and to describe cross-national variability in selected dimensions of delinquency such as versatility, age of onset, co-offending) depends, to large extent, on the particular methodological choices we have made – at the onset of the project, and along the way.
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Notes
- 1.
More detailed accounts of the particular methodological challenges encountered and decisions made by the individual country participants may be found in the country chapters in Juvenile Delinquency in Europe and Beyond: Results of the Second International Self-Report Delinquency Study, by Junger-Tas et al. 2010, Springer.
- 2.
We realize that this statement may be interpreted that we minimize the very real differences that exist even between very much “alike” countries. This is not the intention here. Rather, we see the “similar” and “dissimilar” countries approach simply as a very useful heuristic device which may be used to take full advantage of the types of countries that participate in a comparative study.
- 3.
For national reports the oversampled samples can be weighted down in order to make the overall sample nationally representative.
- 4.
It could be argued that the French samples are city-based samples and not nationally representative. Although Canada did participate, due to data protection policies of Statistics Canada it cannot be included in the following analyses, thus reducing the number of countries effectively to 30.
- 5.
For the present analyses the boundaries we set for city size are revised in order to adjust for the relative differences between countries with respect to what is considered a big or small city. Cities with 300,000 inhabitants or more are defined as large, cities with 100,000 to less than 300,000 as medium sized, and towns with 10,000 less than 100,000 as small towns.
- 6.
In seven national samples the size of the several cities or towns is not known; in further analyses we deal with this problem by treating these cities as a separate category.
- 7.
Excluding Canada and cases of grade 10 or higher.
- 8.
Although all 705 cases of Aruba are actually sampled from a small town, they are effectively subsumed under large and medium sized cities because this small town represents the capital of the country.
- 9.
This was only necessary when using software like SPSS which treated the weights as frequency weights; when employing software which was able to use population weights correctly (such as R, Stata or the complex samples module of SPSS), separate sets of weights for country clusters were not necessary.
- 10.
This is mainly due to Iceland, where only grade 8 students were surveyed. In Norway the nominal grade was decreased by one whereas in Poland it was increased by one because grade 7 to grade 9 students in these countries are about 1 year younger resp. older than in the other countries.
- 11.
Large city: 38.9%; medium city: 41.6%; small towns: 100.
- 12.
Information unavailable, estimation based on information provided in Kivivuori, 2007.
- 13.
Huge variations by district; highest refusal in large city.
- 14.
The refusal rate was higher in the large cities.
- 15.
Participation lower in larger cities.
- 16.
Variation by towns and cities.
- 17.
Large city: 58%; medium city: 75%; small towns: 100%.
- 18.
Variation by city and school type.
- 19.
Medium city: 45%; small town: 48%.
- 20.
Medium city: 53%; small town: 40%.
- 21.
Small towns: 18%; medium cities: 15%; large cities: 16%.
- 22.
Large city: 48%; medium city: 65%; small towns: 72%.
- 23.
The Dutch technical report shows that the characteristics of the final sample are very comparable to those of the target population, suggesting that the high level of school nonparticipation most likely did not produce a biased sample.
- 24.
In Surinam, because of problems related to differences in languages (school vs. home), a large number of youth has to repeat grades, so that the average age of pupils in the seventh, eighth and ninth grade is also quite a bit higher than in the other clusters.
- 25.
Informal e-mail communication with the French research team leader (March 2010).
- 26.
The self-reported estimates of delinquency, alcohol and drug use in the US sample are generally speaking within the range reported by most comparable US surveys of delinquency (Marshall and He 2010).
- 27.
There are some exceptions (e.g., Canada and Ireland).
- 28.
There are some instances, however, where we do no longer know the original source of the question or scale.
- 29.
Two questions dealing with computer hacking (item 60) and downloading music or film illegally (item 59) have not been used as part of the delinquency scale. In particular, the question about downloading music or films turned out to be confusing to youth. The question about “hacking” was less problematic and has occasionally been included.
- 30.
When occasionally distinguishing acquisitive crimes from other offenses, robbery/extortion and snatching can also be combined with the property offenses as mentioned.
- 31.
In the original English version, this is clearly a violent offense. Sometimes, it was interpreted as pick pocketing, sometimes as personal theft. Most researchers, however, interpreted it as a violent offense.
- 32.
Comparable results are reported for cross-validation of the ISRD-2 estimates for alcohol and drug use in the US ISRD sample (see Marshall & He, 2010).
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Marshall, I.H., Enzmann, D. (2012). Methodology and Design of the ISRD-2 Study. In: The Many Faces of Youth Crime. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9455-4_2
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