Crime, Violence and Minority Youths by Becky L Tatum

Author:Becky L Tatum [Tatum, Becky L]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138703223
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2019-01-28T00:00:00+00:00

At least four methodological issues must be addressed in testing the neocolonial model. The first issue involves the selection of a study sample. While many empirical studies analyzing adolescent crime and violence use samples of in school youths, depending on the nature of the study, these types of samples can pose certain problems. Selecting a sample from a population of in school youths may result in a truncated sample; that is, an analysis of individuals with the most extreme values of the variable(s) under observation. Take for example the key variables that comprise the neocolonial model. Measuring structural and perceived oppression, social support and alienation among in school youths may represent those youths who have the lowest or in the case of social support, highest values for these variables. To get a true sense of how these variables vary among adolescent populations, an ideal sample would include youths from different settings: for example, in school youths, school dropouts, and incarcerated youths. Samples with these characteristics, however, are difficult to collect and are costly. Thus initial tests of the neocolonial model are more likely to involve data collected from a single adolescent subgroup; namely, in school youths.

Voluntary participation is related to the first methodological issue. As with sampling, adolescents who voluntarily participate in research studies may significantly differ from those adolescents who do not participate. The question is: are participants less alienated, have lower levels of perceived oppression and higher levels of social support than nonparticipants?

A third methodological issue is the age of the youths to be studied. Adolescents who are 16 to 18 years of age are arguably better subjects for this type of analysis since it is questionable whether younger adolescents (for example, those 14 years of age) are concerned enough with issues of social, political or economic status. In short, youths age 16–18 youths have a higher probability of being directly affected by the social structure than younger adolescents who tend to largely experience social conditions through parents or other media.

Finally, the measurement of the majority of the variables in the neocolonial model requires the collection of self-report data. Self-report data suffer from a number of limitations which include accurate reporting and lower levels of reliability and validity for minority, male, and lower-class subgroups (Berger, 1995).

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