Self Report Studies

Question 1

What are self report studies?

Answer 1

• This involves asking people which crimes they have committed themselves.
• There are obvious ethical problems with self-report studies.
• They are often carried out on young people and tend to focus on certain types of crime and deviance, often quite minor.
• This is good, as it is often these crimes do not get picked up.

Question 2

How might self-report studies be qualitative? (Shaw)

Answer 2

• ‘The Jack-roller’ (Shaw, 1966)
• Involved a series of unstructured interviews to build up a ‘life history’ of a criminal
• This gives insight into criminality, so is favoured by interpretivist sociologists

Question 3

How might self-report studies be quantitative? (Campbell)

Answer 3

• These usually involve a list of offences, requiring respondents to tick the ones they have committed
• This challenges the picture of a typical criminal
• Campbell (1981) found that levels of crime and deviance admitted to by females and males were much closer than the police recorded figures tend to suggest

Question 4

How might self-report studies be longitudinal?

Answer 4

• They follow the same group of participants over several years to get an overview of their criminality
• They measure factors such as family background, peers, education area, gender, and ethnicity

Question 5

What’s an example of a longitudinal self-report study?

Answer 5

• Cambridge study, carried out by Farrington et al
• Followed criminal careers of 411 South London boys, from age 8-32
• Looked at over 4000 young people who offended
• The study provides a continuous account of events in their lives, not just a selected segment of time

Question 6

Are they valid?

Answer 6

• Concerns about the truthfulness and accuracy of data
• Participants may conceal evidence/lie
• Validity is assessed by comparing recorded arrests to self-report studies

Question 7

West and Farrington (validity)

Answer 7

• West and Farrington (1977) found at 18, 94% of convicted boys admitted they had been convicted. While only 2% of unconvicted boys claimed to have been convicted
• Farrington (2001) found young boys are more likely to admit t being convicted than older men and females

Question 8

Are they ethical? (Edinburgh study)

Answer 8

• Key issues relate to informed consent, confidentiality, and the right to withdraw
• Edinburgh Study gained consent from parents through letters
• Parents who didn’t want children involved said so on a tear off slip
• Children are fully informed about the purpose of the study and free to refuse at any time
• Children also had to sign a consent form to allow access to files
• However, only focuses on small groups of crime, so does not give us an overall picture, reducing representativeness

Question 9

Is attrition high?

Answer 9

• The strength or reliability of a study is reduced if attrition is poor
• Refers to participation and drop-out rates in studies
• Co-operation is an issue, according to the Cambridge Study
• The most un-cooperative men at age 32 tended to have un-cooperative parents
• However, in the Edinburgh Study, the participation rate was very high at 94.4% after four ‘sweeps’

Question 10

Farrington (attrition)

Answer 10

Those who are difficult to find/interview tend to commit the most offences