Peer Delinquency - Collateral Follow-up

This measure appears in the following time-points: Collat12, Collat24, Collat36.

Related Construct

Peer Delinquency and Gang Involvement

Description of Measure

The Peer Delinquent Behavior items are a subset of those used by the Rochester Youth Study (Thornberry et al., 1994) to assess the degree of antisocial activity among the adolescent's peers based on the collateral report. There are two dimensions to this scale: Antisocial Behavior (e.g., "During the past year how many of your friends have sold drugs?") and Antisocial Influence (e.g., "During the past year how many of your friends have suggested that you should sell drugs?"). The scale contains 17 items to which participants respond on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from "None of them" to "All of them".

A one-factor CFA model was fit to the Pathways baseline data for each of these two subscales. In each case the fit of the model was acceptable. The following values were produced:

Peer Delinquency-Antisocial behavior (alpha: .92; NFI: .93; NNFI: .92; CFI: .94; RMSEA: .09)
Peer Delinquency-Antisocial influence (alpha: .89; NFI: .95; NNFI: .93; CFI: .96; RMSEA: .07)

The two subscales were also found to have good internal consistency at the follow-up time points. The alphas for the two subscales for 6 through 24 months are as follows:

Peer Delinquency-Antisocial behavior: 6 month - .93; 12 month - .93; 18 month - .93; 24 month - .93
Peer Delinquency-Antisocial influence: 6 month - .89; 12 month - .89; 18 month - .89; 24 month - .91

There are two computed scores for this measure:

Peer Delinquency-Antisocial behavior [C#PRBEHV]; the mean rating of the prevalence of friends who engage in the 10 behaviors listed in this section. Data must be contained in 7 of the 10 items in order to compute a valid mean.
Peer Delinquency-Antisocial influence [C#PRINFL]; the mean rating of the prevalence of friends who encourage the youth to engage in the 7 items listed in this section. Data must be contained in 5 of the 7 items in order to compute a valid mean.

Data Issues

The subject follow-up interview uses 12 items to compute antisocial behavior and requires nine valid responses to receive a valid mean. The collateral follow-up uses ten items and requires seven valid answers to receive a computed score.
Items in this measure capture antisocial behavior within the past year. This differs from the subject baseline measure (where the items are limited to antisocial behavior within the past six months), the subject follow-up (which captures antisocial behavior within the recall period), and the release interview (which captures lifetime antisocial behavior).

References

Thornberry, T.P., Lizotte, A.J., Krohn, M.D., Farnworth, M. & Jang, S.J. (1994). Delinquent peers, beliefs, and delinquent behavior: A longitudinal test of interactional theory. Criminology, 32: 47-83.
Menard, S. and Elliott, D. S. (1996). Prediction of adult success using stepwise logistic regression analysis. A report prepared for the MacArthur Foundation by the MacArthur Chicago-Denver Neighborhood Project.
Elliott, D.S., (1990). National Youth Survey. Institute of Behavioral Science. University of Colorado.