Self-Report Surveys

Measurement has been an important issue in the social sciences in general and in the study of deviance in particular. Scholars, policymakers, the media, and the public have paid a great deal of attention to levels of deviance, especially crime. Following a criminal act, it is possible to get information about a crime from three different sources: (1) the police, (2) the victim, and (3) (if apprehended) the offender. Official crime statistics, victimization surveys, and self-report surveys are developed to get information about crimes from these three different data sources, respectively. In the United States, the most commonly used data come from the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), National Crime Victimization Survey, and Self-Report Surveys. While official reports and victimization surveys are valuable sources of data, scholars have voiced concerns about these types of data sources. That is, the UCR and the National Crime Victimization Survey might provide a biased picture of the extent of crime, since these data are produced by government agencies. These concerns led to the development of the self-report method of data collection about criminal and delinquent acts in 1940s and 1950s.

The idea of the self-report method of data collection is to ask people about the crimes that they have [Page 626]committed. One of the important strengths of this method is that information collected by self-report surveys is not filtered by the formal processes within the criminal justice system. On the other hand, information provided by individuals about their criminal behavior may not be accurate due to the unreliability of memory and the tendency of individuals to lie and exaggerate about their past behavior. The focus on the behavior of adolescents rather than adults and wording of questions is also an important limitation of the self-report method. Another major problem with self-report studies is their tendency to focus on less serious crimes because individuals may not be willing to report their past involvement in serious crimes, especially undetected and unsolved ones. As a result, self-report studies usually focus on behaviors, such as truancy, simple assault, drug and alcohol use, violation of hunting or fishing laws, and similar activities. Despite these limitations concerning the validity and reliability of self-report studies, some scholars nevertheless consider the self-report method an asset to criminological research. For instance, Terence P. Thornberry and Marvin D. Krohn hold that the introduction and use of the self-report method for measuring crime represent one of the most important improvements in criminology.

Early self-report studies include the works of James F. Short and Ivan Nye in the late 1950s. These studies revealed that an important aspect of delinquency and crime was not officially recorded, thus providing a strong justification for using the self-report method of data collection.

The three major self-report studies are National Youth Survey (NYS), Monitoring the Future Survey (MTF), and the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (NHSDA). NYS, a longitudinal survey, has been conducted since 1977 using a national sample of young people aged 11 to 17 years. The NYS includes questions about offenses that are listed in the Federal Bureau of Investigation's UCR, excluding homicide. Participants are interviewed in their homes in the NYS study.

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