Taxometrics and Criminal Justice: Assessing the Latent Structure of Crime-Related Constructs
Highlights
► Taxometric method capable of shedding light on key criminal justice concepts. ► Sample and indicator preconditions discussed. ► Principal procedures include MAMBAC, MAXCOV/MAXEIG, and L-Mode. ► Taxometrics illustrated with delinquency cohort data.
Introduction
It is has been repeatedly demonstrated that a majority of offenses are committed by a small minority of offenders. A general rule of thumb, based on years of research, is that more than half of all crime is committed by less than ten percent of the criminal population (Chaiken and Chaiken, 1982, Farrington and West, 1993, Shannon, 1982, Thornberry et al., 1995, Vaughn et al., 2011, Wolfgang et al., 1972). Variously referred to as life-course persistent delinquents (Moffitt, 1993), criminal psychopaths (Hare, 1993), and career criminals (Glueck & Glueck, 1930), these high-rate offenders account for over half the criminal offenses and close to three-quarters of the serious crimes committed in the United States each year (DeLisi, 2005). Habitual felon and sexual predator laws have been enacted and selective incapacitation policies have been advanced in the belief that targeting these high-rate offenders will significantly reduce the recidivism rate and help protect the public from this small homogeneous group of predatory individuals.
Another topic of concern to criminal justice scholars is the relationship between substance abuse and crime. Over two-thirds of the inmates in a national jail survey reported symptoms of alcohol/drug abuse or dependence (Karberg & James, 2005). Determining whether substance abuse/dependence is categorical or dimensional could help clarify this relationship. Cloninger has long maintained that a category of alcohol abuse, the male-limited pattern, is associated with high levels of criminality in both the father and child (Cloninger, Bohman, & Sigvardsson, 1981). This suggests that a category of behavior, Type II or male limited alcoholism, may explain, in part, the well-documented relationship between substance abuse and crime. These and other issues central to the criminology and criminal justice fields could be more thoroughly investigated and understood if researchers in these fields were more familiar with techniques designed to examine the latent structure of crime-related constructs like high-rate delinquency and Type II alcoholism.
Section snippets
What is latent structure and why is it important?
The manner in which a non-observable (psychological) construct distinguishes or differentiates between entities is known as its latent structure. The latent structure of a construct can be categorical, dimensional, or a mixture of both (Meehl, 1995). Categorical latent structure means that the construct divides entities into distinct groups or categories (e.g., Type I versus Type II alcoholism). Dimensional latent structure means that the construct orders entities along a continuum of scores or
Measuring latent structure
Traditionally, decisions about latent structure have been made on the basis of factor analytic or cluster analytic studies. Neither procedure, however, is particularly effective in differentiating between categorical and dimensional latent structure. To infer that a construct is dimensional based on the emergence of one or more factors constitutes an error in mathematical reasoning, says Meehl (1999), because statistical factors can be extracted from indicators of a categorical construct.
Taxometric principles
The taxometric method is based on four core principles: coherent cut kinetics, consistency testing, comparison curve analysis, and evidence-based procedures. Meehl and his colleagues employed the principle of coherent cut kinetics to create the taxometric method (Grove and Meehl, 1993, Meehl and Yonce, 1994, Meehl and Yonce, 1996, Waller and Meehl, 1998). Moving a cut score through a distribution of indicators (cut kinetics) for the purpose of determining whether predictable results can be
Preconditions for taxometric analysis
A taxometric analysis is only as valid as the sample and indicators upon which it is based. Consequently certain sample and indicator preconditions need to be met before a taxometric analysis can be carried out.
Taxometric procedures
There are three general categories of non-redundant taxometric procedures: mean above minus below a cut (MAMBAC: Meehl & Yonce, 1994), maximum covariance/maximum eigenvalue (MAXCOV/MAXEIG: Meehl and Yonce, 1996, Waller and Meehl, 1998), and latent mode factor analysis (L-Mode: Waller & Meehl, 1998). Each procedure makes use of graphs in which the input indicator is aligned along the x- (longitudinal) axis and the output indicator is measured on the y- (vertical) axis.
Purpose
To provide an illustration of how the taxometric method can be applied to criminal justice data, the following set of analyses were conducted to determine whether a small group of delinquents from the 1945 Philadelphia birth cohort (Wolfgang, Figlio, & Sellin, 1972) known to be responsible for the majority of delinquent acts committed by the cohort formed a qualitatively distinct group or taxon.
Participants
The 1945 Philadelphia birth cohort is a group of 9,944 boys born in 1945 who lived in Philadelphia
Conclusion
The purpose of this paper was to describe the taxometric method and illustrate its potential utility to researchers, theorists, and practitioners in the fields of criminology and criminal justice. Readers interested in more information on how to apply the taxometric method to social and behavioral science data should consult a recently published paper by Ruscio, Ruscio, and Carney (2011). From the information presented in both papers, it would seem that taxometrics has a great deal to offer
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