Citation

Loeber R, Waller D. Br. J. Criminol. 1988; 28(4): 461-477.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1988, Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, Publisher Oxford University Press)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The paper challenges the results of past factor analylic studies in delinquency which have purportedly shown more evidence for generalised than for specialised delinquency in juveniles. An examination of existing studies shows that reports of generalised delinquency often coincide with the use of self-reported delinquency measures containing few answer categories, while specialised delinquency is more apparent when more answer categories are used. The present study systematically manipulates the answer categories of an existing data set and reports on the results of various factor analysis techniques comparing three-answer with continuous-answer categories. When the number of factor loadings is the criterion, a three-answer version compared with a continuous-answer version produces more evidence of generalised delinquency, particularly in the case of principal component analysis or varimax rotation. When factor labels served as the criterion, the opposite was found. The contents of the factors were very much a function of the truncation of the answer categories. In summary, manipulation of answer categories produces considerably divergent results, which easily could lead to substantially different conclusions about the presence or absence of delinquency specialisation or generalisation.