Operational Lessons from the Pathways to Desistance Project

Abstract

Implementing a large, longitudinal study of any sample is a major undertaking. The challenges are compounded when the study involves multiple sites and a high-risk sample. This article outlines the methodology for the Pathways to Desistance study, a multisite, longitudinal study of serious juvenile offenders, and discusses the key operational decisions with the greatest impact on the study design.Keywords juvenile delinquents; juvenile offenders; multisite study; participant retention; operational issues; participant recruitment; longitudinal studies; data collection; tracking participants; Pathways to Desistance; methods Over the past 2 decades, a great deal has been learned about the risk indicators associated with adolescent antisocial behavior and delinquency. Indeed, much has been clarified about how delinquent behavior starts, the general trajectory of this behavior during adolescence, and the relative predictive power of certain risk indicators (see, for example, Blumstein, Cohen, Roth, & Visher, 1986;Cicchetti & Cohen, 1995;Farrington, 1997;LeBlanc & Loeber, 1998;Loeber, Farrington, Stouthamer-Loeber, Moffitt, & Caspi, 2001;Moffitt, 1993;Sampson & Laub, 1990, 1997. One particularly important finding to emerge from this literature is that relatively few adolescent offenders go on to serious adult offending (Loeber & Farrington, 2000;Moffitt, 1993). Consequently, one of the most pressing current challenges for the field is to reliably NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptYouth Violence Juv Justice. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2010 January 29. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript distinguish between juvenile offenders who will continue problem behavior beyond adolescence and those who will not.Successfully meeting this challenge requires a greater empirical understanding about how and why juveniles desist from committing crime. Several calls have been made for researchers to study desistance from criminal activity with the same vigor exerted toward issues surrounding the onset of criminal activity (e.g., Farrington, 1997), yet the literature in this domain remains scant. One comprehensive approach to understanding this process would be to examine desistance from criminal activity prospectively, using multiple sources of information beyond official reporting (Farrington, 1997). This approach would be guided by the literature on child and adolescent development, and sensitive to the potential implications of findings for designing interventions and developing rational justice policies.The Pathways to Desistance Project highlighted in this special edition is an attempt to take up this challenge. It is a large-scale, two-site longitudinal examination of desistance from crime among adolescent serious offenders. The goal of the current study was to elucidate how developmental processes, social context, and intervention and sanctioning experiences affect the process of desistance from crime. The current study employed a prospective design with a broad measurement...

Investigating different factor structures of the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth version: Confirmatory factor analytic findings.

“…Complete details of the study methodology are provided in Schubert et al (2004). The following is a summary of that description as it pertains to the present analysis.…”

Psychopathy, gang membership, and moral disengagement among juvenile offenders

“…As described in more detail elsewhere (e.g., Schubert et al, 2004), participants were serious adolescent offenders from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Phonenix who were interviewed as part of the Pathways to Desistance Study. Participants were included in the study if they, (a) had been adjudicated guilty of a serious felony (excluding less serious property crimes), misdemeanour weapons, or misdemeanour sexual assault offense in juvenile or adult courts in Philadelphia or Phoenix, and (b) were between the ages of 14-17 at the time of their offence.…”

Race and Justice System Attitude Formation During the Transition to Adulthood

“…Participants were male adolescents enrolled in the Pathways to Desistance study, a prospective study of serious juvenile offenders in Phoenix (n=527) and Philadelphia (n=589) (see [47], for complete details of study methodology). Adolescents were eligible for study participation if they were between the ages of 14 and 17 and had been charged with a felony or similarly serious non-felony offense (e.g., misdemeanor weapons offense).…”