Studying Deviance

Studying Deviance

1. Official Statistics

   • Numerical tabulations comiled by gov & social service agencies
   • Data sources: arrest, census, victim, medical, public health, court
   • Valitidy problems: unrecognized crimes, outdated categories & reporting
   • Child Abuse Reporting
     • Opposing Problems: unreported vs unsubstantiated cases
       • 60-65% unsubstantiated reports nationally
       • 56% unreported cases to authorities
     • 3 factors on child abuse statistical increases
       • Social definition of abuse
       • Media campaigns
       • Mandatory reporting laws due to expansion of prevention/treatment programs, education programs, and public awareness campaigns

2. Field Research

   • Live w/members of deviant groups
   • Compiles richly descriptive and analytical information, generally longitudinal
   • Expensive, time consuming, lacks generalizability and objectivity
   • Researching Dealers & Smugglers subculture over 4 yr span
     • Issues: effect of drugs on the data-gathering process, assuming risks while doing research, cultural clash between us and subjects, & ethical problems (initimacies/confidences,guilty feelings)
     • Researcher became friends w/drug smuggler neighbor; was granted "membership" into group of smugglers after 1 yr
     • Conclusion: Researchers had to become trusted, then reveal true self for real data, & use a combo of overt/covert roles. Study criminals in natural habitat showed complexity of their subculture; their dimensions of lifestyle, social stratification, social organization, and motivation.

3. Survey Research

   • 3 major surveys: National Youth Survey, Monitoring the Future, & Kinsey surveys
   • Used to compile information about behavior that isn't routinely collected by the gov/official agencies
   • Validity problems: inaccurate deviant sample group, deviants define questions different than author, & correlations considered casual.
   • Survey of Sexual Behavior of Americans
     • Nation Health & Social Survey sample design
     • Probablity sampling method of 20,000 people; 80% completion rate
     • Face-to-face, telephone and self-administered
     • Issues: where to draw boundaries in defining sex, appropriate language when asking about sex, slang deteriorating meaning.