INTERFACING INDICATORS AND CONSTRUCTS IN CRIMINOLOGICAL RESEARCH: A NOTE ON THE COMPARABILITY OF SELF-REPORT VIOLENCE DATA FOR RACE AND SEX GROUPS |
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| Authors: | DOUGLAS A SMITH LAURA A DAVIDSON |
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| Institution: | Douglas Smith is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Criminology, University of Maryland. In addition to pursuing research on latent variable models, he is engaged in an ongoing program of research on factors influencing the decision making of legal officials. Laura A. Davidson is a doctoral candidate in Criminology at the University of Maryland. She is currently engaged in research on ecological correlates of criminal victimization. |
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| Abstract: | This paper examines issues in using self-reports of involvement in violent acts to measure a latent construct (propensity toward violence). Three issues are addressed. First, the meaning of latent variables and the factor-analytic approach to modeling latent constructs are discussed. Second, the comparability of self-report violence measures across race and sex groups is assessed. Third, the consequences are discussed of estimating factor analytic models on pooled samples of data where the measurement component of the model does not apply equally for different subsets of the sample. |
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