Age, Criminal Victimization, and Offending: Changing Relationships from Adolescence to Middle Adulthood

Abstract

The finding that victims and offenders are often the same individuals has led to attempts at explaining the positive correlation between victimization and offending. Much of the evidence for the positive relationship between victimization and offending, however, was based on samples of adolescents and young adults, or on data with other limitations. In the present study, we use longitudinal self-report data on victimization and offending in a national probability sample to examine the impacts of victimization on offending and offending on victimization, controlling for sociodemographic and theoretical predictors of both, to see whether the relationship is consistent across the life course from adolescence to early middle age. The results suggest that the relationship between being a perpetrator and being a victim of crime changes over the life course, and that explanations for the victimization-offending relationship need to take this life course variation into account.

Long-Term Consequences of Intimate Partner Abuse on Physical Health, Emotional Well-Being, and Problem Behaviors

“…Retention was 78% for Wave 9, 75% for Wave 10, and 70% for Wave 11. Given the 28-year time span of the study, these retention rates are quite reasonable as compared with other longitudinal studies (Menard, 2012;Menard, Morris, Gerber, & Covey, 2011). Wave 9, Wave 10, and Wave 11 will hereafter be referred to as Time 1, Time 2, and Time 3 for clarification purposes.…”

Adolescent Exposure to Violence and Adult Violent Victimization and Offending

“…We repeated the analysis for Tables 2–5 using the natural logarithm of the frequency of offending instead of prevalence as the dependent variable in ordinary least squares regression. The use of the natural logarithm reflects our expectation, based on past research on offending and victimization (e.g., Menard, 2012) that relationships are likely to be nonlinear and reasonably well approximated by the natural logarithmic transformation of the dependent variable; that, as indicated in Huizinga and Elliott (1986), differences in estimates of lower frequencies are likely to be more reliable than higher frequencies (and use of the natural logarithm gives greater weight to the differences among lower frequencies than those among higher frequencies); and it also reduces the skewness in the dependent variables. The results are available from the authors upon request, but are not shown in detail here because, with respect to which relationships were statistically significant at the .05 level, and the direction of those relationships, the substantive findings were the same, with two minor exceptions.…”

Intergenerational Continuity of Substance Use

“…In total, 12 waves of panel data were collected over a 27year period from 1977 to 2004. Participation was estimated at 73% of the eligible sample, and retention rates after the first wave of data collection are quite reasonable compared to other longitudinal studies-over 90% for the first four waves, over 80% for Waves 5-8, and over 70% for Waves 9-11 (Menard, 2012;Menard et al, 2011).…”

“…The current study analyzes data collected by the National Youth Survey Family Study (NYSFS; see, e.g., Menard, 2012;Menard, Morris, Gerber, & Covey, 2011), which collected data on first generation (G1), second generation (G2), and third generation (G3) respondents. 1 First, given that NYSFS data were collected over a 27-year period, we begin by assessing intergenerational continuity of substance use overall, across all waves of data and regardless of developmental stage or age of respondent.…”