Bias, Discretion, and Interpreting Statistics

Youth Justice — Week 3. From the comprehensive notes.

Lying / response bias

people may over-report or under-report offending or victimization.

Recall problems

participants may forget incidents or details.

Telescoping

participants may place an event in the wrong time period.

Question design

a survey may ask about behaviours that are poor indicators of the concept “crime.”

Institutional discretion

police, courts, schools, and other agencies decide what is observed, recorded, charged, or diverted.

Self-fulfilling prophecy

A process in which expectations help produce the pattern they predict; for example, concentrating surveillance on groups assumed to offend more can produce higher official statistics for those same groups.