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Self-Reported Offending (SRO) - Subject Baseline

This measure appears in the following time-points: Baseline.

Related Construct

Description of Measure

The Self-Reported Offending (SRO; Huizinga, Esbensen, & Weihar, 1991) was adapted for this study to measure the adolescent's account of involvement in antisocial and illegal activities. The SRO consists of 24-items which elicit subject involvement in different types of crime. For each endorsed item, a set of follow-up questions are triggered that collect more information regarding the reported offense (e.g., "How old were you the first time you did this?"; "How many times have you done this in the past year?"). The follow-up items can be used to identify whether the adolescent reports doing an act within the past six months or only prior to that period, as well as the age of onset and whether or not the act was committed alone or with a group.

Two of the 24 SRO-items ("ever went joyriding" and "ever broke into a car to steal") were added to the Pathways research battery after a large number of subjects had completed either baseline or six-month follow-up interviews. The introduction of these items produced a large amount of missing data at these two time points, making the calculation of a consistently meaningful score difficult across all available time points. As a result, in January, 2005, the working group decided that all SRO scores would be based on 22-items instead of the full, 24-item measure administered. Thus, although 24 items are administered for the vast proportion of the interviews, the calculation of the SRO score uses only 22 of these items.

Following the standard for reporting in criminology, self-reported offending can be characterized in two basic ways: a variety score (the number of different types of criminal acts in which the person engages) and frequency scores (the total number of unique criminal acts committed, regardless of type). Variety and frequency scores are generally very highly correlated and are often used interchangeably for analyses. The working group, however, decided to consistently report analyses using the variety score, with the option of reporting analyses using frequency scores when the question at hand required such considerations. Variety scores are calculated here as the proportion of endorsed items divided by the number of questions answered. Items that were not asked or for which the subject replied "don't know" are removed from the denominator.

The closer the proportion score is to "1", the greater the variety of offenses the youth has committed. The following variables are generated:

Two sub-categories of Offending Variety are also computed: Aggressive Offending Variety (e.g., "Been in a fight?") and Income Offending Variety (e.g., "Used checks or credit cards illegally?"). These are calculated in the same manner as the variety score variables described above. That is, each of these scores is a proportion in which the numerator is the number of endorsed types of acts within the subcategory and the denominator is the number of items asked which are either aggressive offenses (for aggressive offending variety score) or income offenses (for income offending variety score). There are 11 SRO items which are coded as "aggressive", 10 SRO items which are coded as "income". Eight of the "income" items are used to calculate an "income - no drug" score as well. It should be noted that there is some overlap between the "aggressive" and "income" distinction. Specifically, the following two items are included in both the aggressive and income scales: "took something by force with a weapon" and "took something by force without a weapon".

Six scores can be generated for these categories of offending:

Also computed is a variable which calculates the youngest age of the subject's first offense.

The following individual items are also available:

The Self-Report of Offending (SRO) was used in both baseline and followup time points.

Data Issues

This issue was further discussed with the working group in August, 2004. At that time, the group decided to change the way the variety scores were calculated. Instead of continuing to use the "count" function to calculate these scores, the group decided to switch to a proportion. That is, the score becomes the number of endorsed items divided by the number of items asked (in most cases 24 items, but in some, 22 items or fewer were asked).

References