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Validation of the Crime and Violence Scale (CVS) Against the Rasch Measurement Model Including Differences by Gender, Race and Age

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posted on 2011-05-25, 00:00 authored by Kendon J. Conrad, Karen M. Conrad, Ya-Fen Chan, Barth B. Riley, Michael L. Dennis
In assessing criminality, researchers have used counts of crimes, arrests etc. because interval measures were not available. Additionally, crime seriousness varies depending on demographic factors. This study examined the Crime and Violence Scale (CVS) regarding: psychometric quality using item response theory (IRT); and invariance of the crime seriousness hierarchy for gender, age, and racial/ethnic groups on 7435 respondents. The CVS is a useful measure of criminality, though some items could be improved or dropped. Differential item functioning analysis revealed that crime seriousness varies by age and gender. IRT shows promise in assessing and adjusting for demographic variations in crime seriousness.

Funding

This development of this paper was supported by the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT), Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) via Westat under contract 270-2003-00006 to Dr. Dennis at Chestnut Health Systems in Bloomington, Illinois using data provided by the following grants and contracts from CSAT (TI-11320, TI-11317, TI-11321, TI-11323, TI-11324, TI-11422, TI-11424, TI-11423, TI-11894, TI-11874, TI-11888, TI-11892, TI-11871, TI-13309, TI-13356, TI-13305, TI-13340, TI-13344, TI-13322, TI-13323, TI-13345, TI-13308, TI-13354, TI-13313, TI-14254, TI-14376, TI-14311, TI-14196, TI-14214, TI-14261, TI-14090, TI-14189, TI-14252, TI-14283, TI-14355, TI-14272, TI-14103, TI-14267, TI-14315, TI-14188, TI-14271, TI-15686, TI-15671, TI-15486, TI-15545, TI-15672, TI-15475, TI-15678, TI-15447, TI-15461, TI-15433, TI-15481, TI-15514, TI-15478, TI-15413, TI-15483, TI-15670, TI-15674, TI-15479, TI-15682, TI-15467, TI-15511, TI-15562, TI-13601, TI-13190, TI-12541, TI-00567; Contract 207-98-7047, Contract 277-00-6500), the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) (R01 AA 10368), the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) (R37 DA11323; R01 DA 018183), the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority (95-DB-VX-0017), and the Illinois Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse (PI 00567).

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Publisher Statement

Post print version of article may differ from published version. The definitive version is available through SAGE Publications at DOI: 10.1177/0193841X10362162.

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Language

  • en_US

issn

0193-841X

Issue date

2010-04-01

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    Keywords

    criminality measurementitem response theoryRasch analysiscrime seriousnessGlobal Appraisal of Individual Needs (GAIN)

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    In Copyright

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