Self-Reported and Official Offending from Adolescence to Adulthood

Abstract

The research reported in this chapter had three major objectives. The first was to study the prevalence of different types of offending, as measured by self-reports and official convictions, of the same sample at different ages from adolescence to adulthood. The second was to investigate the relationship between self-reported and official offending of the same sample at different ages, and hence to advance knowledge about the concurrent and predictive validity of self-reports in comparison with official records. The third was to study the relationship between offending at one age and offending at another, as measured by both self-reports and official convictions, and hence to advance knowledge about the issues of continuity or discontinuity and specialization or versatility in offending.