The current investigation examined the psychometric properties of Grasmick et al.'s self-control measure and its relationship with deviance on large, representative adolescent samples ( N = 8,417) from Hungary, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United States. Important findings indicate that (1) the self-control measure is multidimensional; (2) the self-control measure is tenable for males, females, five different age groups (15-, 16-, 17-, 18-, and 19-year-olds), and adolescents from four different countries; (3) deviance as assessed by the Normative Deviance Scale (NDS) can be reliably measured in different countries; (4) self-control accounts for 10 to 16 percent of the total variance explained in different types of deviance and for 20 percent in total deviance; and (5) developmental processes involving self-control and deviance are largely invariant by national context. The investigation provides further support for the multidimensional self-control measure and its relationship with deviance independent of national context.
We explored the limitations of self-reports as substitutes for observation of deviant behavior. Results of a study conducted in The Netherlands indicated negligible correspondence between respondents' self-reports of tax evasion and officially documented behavior. Nonsignificant correlations were obtained despite the fact that all government claims against the respondents had been settled, unprotested, before this study began and despite the respondents' awareness that the accuracy of their selfreports could be checked against their tax records, [n addition, the results suggest that different explanatory variables may be correlated with each type of behavioral measure. In this instance, attitude toward the act i,\Kl) measures and subjective norm measures exhibited significant correlations with the self-report data but not with officially documented behavior, and measures of more broadly focused personal dispositions predicted actual behavior but not self-reports. Such outcomes suggest that the explanatory power of the theory of reasoned action may not extend to the domain of socially proscribed behaviors where self-presentation concerns are likely to prompt both misrepresentations of past behavior and reports of altitudes and perceived norms consistent with those misrepresentations.Verbal statements by individuals describing their past behavior are one of the most widely used sources of information about many domains of human activity. They are the basis of medical histories, court testimony, employment records, and tax returns, and have become a pervasive method for data collection within the social sciences. The popularity of self-reports, however, has not diminished the sense that they are often untrustworthy (e.g.,
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