For better or for worse?: an investigation of the effects of marital status and openness to self-improvement on criminal offending

Abstract

The relationship between marriage and criminal behaviour has been widely studied. Less attention has been given to the comparison between marital status categories with respect to criminality. Virtually no attention has been given to the effects of self-improvement on criminality.This study used a two-way factorial ANOVA to examine the effects of marital status and openness to self-improvement on number of charges across a sample of male inmates in the United States (N=369). Statistically significant results were found for both main effects and the interaction effect. The null hypothesis stating that there are no statistically significant average differences in number of criminal charges for the factors marital status, openness to self-improvement, and the interaction effects between marital status and openness to selfimprovement was rejected. Results indicate that statistically significant average differences in number of charges exist across marital status categories. Statistically significant average differences in number of charges were also present among categories of openness to selfimprovement. Statistically significant average differences in number of charges were also found for the interaction between the two factors.Implications are discussed with respect to these findings. Limitations and opportunities for future research are also discussed.