The author(s) shown below used Federal funds provided by the U.S. Department of Justice and prepared the following final report: Document Title: The Victim-Offender Overlap: Specifying the Role of Peer Groups Author(s): Jennifer N. Shaffer Document No.: 205126 Date Received: April 2004 Award Number: 2002-IJ-CX-0008 This report has not been published by the U.S. Department of Justice. To provide better customer service, NCJRS has made this Federally- funded grant final report available electronically in addition to traditional paper copies. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School Crime, Law, and Justice Program THE VICTIM-OFFENDER OVERLAP: SPECIFYING THE ROLE OF PEER GROUPS A Thesis in Crime, Law, and Justice by Jennifer N. Shaffer Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2003 The thesis of Jennifer N. Shaffer was reviewed and approved* by the following: Date of Signature R. Barry Ruback Professor of Crime, Law, & Justice and Sociology Thesis Advisor Chair of Committee D. Wayne Osgood Professor of Crime, Law, & Justice and Sociology Eric Silver Assistant Professor of Crime, Law, Justice, and Sociology John W. Graham Professor of Human Development and Family Studies Glenn Firebaugh Professor of Sociology Head of the Department of Sociology *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School iii ABSTRACT Although research consistently indicates that adolescents’ peers are an important determinant of their involvement in crime as offenders, there has been little attention to whether adolescents’ peers influence adolescent victimization. This omission is problematic both because some adolescents alternate between offending and victimization and because many of the same factors that predict offending also predict victimization, suggesting the peer groups may be an important, but overlooked determinant of victimization. Despite important gains in understanding the overlap between victimization and offending important areas of research are undeveloped. Key questions remaining include (a) What is the causal connection between victimization and offending? For example, do they share a similar etiological process? Are they reciprocally related?; (b) How do peers influence both adolescents’ risk for victimization and the relationship between victimization and offending?; and (c) Does social context influence the relationships among victimization, offending, and peer groups? This dissertation addressed each of the issues using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Among the more important advantages of these data is the inclusion of detailed information about adolescents’ families, the friendship networks among adolescents and their peers, and adolescents’ involvement in crime as both victims and offenders. The results indicate that 1) the relationship between victimization and offending is iv substantial, robust, and reciprocal and that the victim-offender overlap is likely the result of a similar social process; 2) peer group characteristics influence adolescents’ risk of both victimization and offending and moderate the effects of offending on victimization; and 3) school context generally does not significantly affect the victim- offender overlap. v TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures viii List of Tables ix Acknowledgements xi Chapter 1: The Victim-Offender Overlap, Peer Groups, and Social Context 1 Introduction and Research Questions 1 The Victim-Offender Overlap 7 Prior Research on the Victim-Offender Overlap 11 Summary and Implications 30 Peer Groups and Adolescent Involvement in Crime 35 Defining Peer Groups 36 Peer Groups and Offending 38 Peer Groups and Victimization 51 Social Network Perspective 59 School Context and the Victim-Offender Overlap 66 Summary & Hypotheses 70 Chapter 2: Data and Measures 94 Data 94 In-School Surveys 95 In-Home Interviews 96 Social Networks 98 School Administrators Questionnaire 98 Key Measures and Analytic Plan 99 Dependent Variables 99 vi Independent Variables 101 Social Network Measures 101 Routine Activities 106 School Context 108 Data Limitations 109 Analytic Plan 112 Chapter 3: Adolescent Criminal Involvement 115 Sample Selection and Descriptive Statistics 115 Prevalence of Victimization, Offending, and Being Part of the Victim-Offender Overlap 121 Summary 123 Bi-Variate Analyses 123 Summary 128 Group Comparisons 130 Peer Group Characteristics 135 Peers’ Criminal Involvement 136 Individual Characteristics 137 Summary 138 Conclusions 139 Chapter 4: Multivariate Relationships between Victimization and Offending 145 Cross-lag Logistic Regression Models 146 Results 149 Victimization 149 Offending 159 Summary 165 Instrumental Variable General Methods of Moments Models 167 Results 170 Victimization 170 Offending 174 Summary 177 vii Conclusions 178 Chapter 5: Membership in the Victim-Offender Overlap and School Context 184 Bi-Variate Probit Models 184 Test for a Common Underlying Social Process 186 Common Predictors 189 Hierarchical Linear Models 191 Summary 194 Chapter 6: Conclusions 196 Summary of Major Findings 197 Future Research 202 Policy Implications 203 References 206 Appendix A. Complete List of Studies Concerning the Victim-Offender Overlap 212 Appendix B. Additional Interaction Models 215 Appendix C. Negative Binomial Poisson Models 221 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Illustration of Network Centrality 92 Figure 2. Illustration of Network Density 93 Figure 3a. Offender Year 1 by Centrality 156 Figure 3b. Offender Year 1 by Density 157 Figure 4. Offender Year 1 by Peer Group Offending 158 Figure 5. Centrality by Density 159 Figure 6. Centrality by Status Prestige 165 Figure 7. Non-recursive Model of the Relationship between Victimization and Offending 168 ix LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Significant Prior Research on the Victim-Offender Overlap 75 Table 2. Definition and Calculation of Variables Included in Research 83 Table 3a. Descriptive Statistics for Sample Wave 1 117 Table 3b. Descriptive Statistics for Sample Wave 2 119 Table 4. Prevalence of Victimization and Offending 121 Table 5. Distribution of Criminal Involvement in Adolescent Peer Groups 122 Table 6. Relationship Between Offending and Victimization Within Years 124 Table 7. Relationship Between Victimization and Offending Across Years 125 Table 8. Correlation Coefficients between Adolescent Criminal Involvement and Peer Group Characteristics 127 Table 9a. Cross-tab Comparison of Adolescents by Crime Group 133 Table 9b. One-Way ANOVA Comparison of Adolescents by Crime Group 134 Table 10. Number of Significant Differences between Crime Groups 143 Table 11. Base Models: Cross-lag Logistic Regression Models of Victimization Year 2 150 Table 12. Peer Group Interaction Models: Cross-lag Logistic Regression Models of Victimization Year 2 154 Table 13. Base Models: Cross-lag Logistic Regression Models of Offending Year 2 161 Table 14. Peer Group Interaction Models: Cross-lag Logistic x Regression Models of Offending Year 2 163 Table 15. GMM-IVE Logistic Regression Models of Victimization Year 2 171 Table 16. GMM-IVE Logistic Regression Models of Offending Year 2 175 Table 17. Bi-variate Probit Regression of Victimization and Offending 187 Table 18. HLM Regression of Victimization and Offending 193 xi Acknowledgements Throughout this project, I have been fortunate to have the guidance and support of an outstanding committee. I gratefully acknowledge their insight, their thoughtful comments, and the time they gave to me and to this project. In particular, my interest in the victim-offender overlap and, more generally, victimization developed through coursework and research collaborations with Barry Ruback. I thank Barry for his valuable advice and generous mentoring, which were a tremendous benefit to me and influenced my thinking about the issues explored here in significant ways. Wayne Osgood also influenced my thinking about the victim-offender overlap, and his guidance and encouragement have been an important resource both during this project and throughout the completion of my graduate work. Eric Silver’s helpful suggestions improved this dissertation; his insights about about crime and deviance and about criminologogy in general were both thought provoking and entertaining. I am grateful to John Graham for his helpful comments on this research and for his time, which made it possible for me to complete this project in a reasonable period. I also thank John for providing my most memorable learning experience as a graduate student; no one could have better impressed upon his students the significance of a multi-trait multi-method approach. I gratefully acknowledge fellowship grants from the National Institute of Justice and the National Consortium on Violence Research (NCOVR), which provided financial support for this dissertation. I am also grateful to the members and fellows of NCOVR xii for providing a stimulating environment to explore my ideas within and who reacted to earlier versions of this dissertation. The staff at Penn State’s Population Research Institute were exceptional and provided considerable help with writing program code to construct the social network data and with accessing and maintaining the data. This research is based on data from the Add Health project, a program designed by J. Richard Udry (principal investigator) and Peter Bearman and funded by grant P01-