Indices of Personal and Social Costs and Rewards - Subject Baseline
This measure appears in the following time-points: Baseline.
Related Construct
Description of Measure
Empirical evidence on deterrence suggests that offending has both personal and social rewards and that punishment associated with this offending has distinct social and personal costs (Williams and Hawkins, 1986; Nagin, 1998). Previous tests with general populations of adolescents (Grasmick et al., 1990) and college students (Nagin and Paternoster, 1991, 1994) show that these costs form essential components of a dynamic model of deterrence that includes both the punishment costs of arrest and the social costs of detection and punishment. As a result, the Indices of Personal and Social Costs and Rewards were adapted for this study to measure the adolescent's perceived likelihood of detection and punishment for any of several types of offenses (Nagin and Paternoster, 1994). This measure is comprised of five dimensions: Certainty of Punishment {Others & You (e.g., "How likely is it that kids in your neighborhood would be caught and arrested for fighting?")}, Social Costs of Punishment (e.g., "If the police catch me doing something that breaks the law, how likely is it that I would be suspended from school?"), Personal Costs of Punishment {Variety & Weight (e.g., "Has your court sentence kept you from hanging out with your friends as much as you used to?")], Social Rewards of Crime [Stealing, Fighting & Robbery (e.g., "If I take things, other people my age will respect me more.")}, and Personal Rewards of Crime (e.g., "How much 'thrill' or 'rush' is it to break into a store or home?").
Confirmatory factor analysis was completed for several of the domains mentioned below at the baseline time point.
- Social costs of punishment: a one factor model resulted in an acceptable fit with the following values: alpha: .68; NFI: .94; NNFI: .92; CFI: .95; RMSEA: .07.
- Certainty of punishment-others: Both a one-factor and two-factor model fit this data. The values for the one-factor model are: NFI: .95; NNFI: .93: CFI: .95; RMSEA: .09. The values for the two-factor model (the two factors are parallel to the crime type): NFI: .94; NNFI: .91: CFI: .95: RMSEA: .09. The alpha for this domain is: .82
- Certainty of punishment-you: Both a one-factor and two-factor model fit this data. The values for the one-factor model are: NFI: .98; NNFI: .98: CFI: .98; RMSEA: .07. The values for the two-factor model (the two factors are parallel to the crime type): NFI: .98; NNFI: .97: CFI: .98: RMSEA: .08. The alpha for this domain is: .89
- Social rewards of crime-fighting: A one-factor model was fitted to the data and produced the following values: alpha: .75; NFI: .96; NNFI: .92: CFI: .96: RMSEA: .07
- Social rewards of crime-stealing: A one-factor model was fitted to the data and produced the following values: alpha: .76; NFI: .95; NNFI: .92: CFI: .96: RMSEA: .08.
For the remaining scales, the reliability coefficient is as follows:
- Personal Costs of Punishment - Variety: .99
- Personal Costs of Punishment - Weight: .93
- Social Rewards of Crime - Robbery: .82
- Personal Rewards of Crime: .88
Ten scores that correspond to each of the domains in the measure are computed:
- Certainty of punishment-others [s0punoth]; mean of 7 items
- Certainty of punishment-you [s0punyou]; mean of of 7 items
- Social costs of punishment [s0soccst]. If the subject has a boyfriend/girlfriend at the time of the interview, this is computed as the mean of six items. If not in a relationship, this is computed as the mean of five items.
- Punishment costs-variety [s0varcst]; count of 18 items
- Punishment costs (13) - material issues [s0matcst]; sum of 13 items
- Punishment costs (5) - freedom issues [s0frecst]; sum of 5 items
- Punishment costs-weight [s0wgtcst]; mean of 18 items
- Social rewards of crime-stealing [s0stlrwd]; mean of 5 items
- Social rewards of crime-fighting [s0fgtrwd]; mean of 5 items
- Social rewards of crime-robbery [s0robrwd]; mean of 5 items
- Personal Rewards of crime [s0perrwd]; mean of 7 items
The following individual items are also available:
- Ever do crazy dangerous things for fun [S0PCL013]
- Age started doing crazy things for fun [S0PCL015]
- Like to speed or take chances when you drive [S0PCL016]
- Ever been stopped/chased by police for speeding/reckless driving [S0PCL017]
- Number times stopped/chased for speeding/reckless driving [S0PCL018]
- Tend to stay in one place or get bored and move on [S0PCL019]
Data Issues
- If the subject does not have a boyfriend or girlfriend at the time of the interview, then item s0proj74 (I would lose respect from my boyfriend/girlfriend) is skipped. This item is used in the computation of the "social costs of punishment" score (s0soccst). If in a relationship, then s0soccst is computed as the mean of six items. If not in a relationship, s0soccst is computed as the mean of only five items.
References
- Nagin, Daniel S. and Raymond Paternoster. (1994). Personal Capital and Social Control: The Deterrence Implications of Individual Differences in Criminal Offending. Criminology 32:581--606.
- Nagin, D. S. and Paternoster, R. (1993). Enduring individual differences and rational choice theories of crime. Law and Society Review, 27, 467-469.
- Piquero, A. R. and Tibbetts, S G. (1996). Specifying the direct and indirect effects of low self-control and situational factors in offenders' decision making: toward a more complex model of rational offending. Justice Quarterly, 13, 481-510.
- Developed by the working group for this study, primarily by J. Fagan.