RESEARCH ARTICLE
Methodological Concerns in the Study of Intergenerational Transmission of Criminal Behavior and Children of Incarcerated Parents
Nicolle Parsons-Pollard*
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2011Volume: 4
First Page: 96
Last Page: 100
Publisher Id: TOFAMSJ-4-96
DOI: 10.2174/1874922401104010096
Article History:
Received Date: 22/12/2009Revision Received Date: 14/10/2011
Acceptance Date: 15/1/2011
Electronic publication date: 30/12/2011
Collection year: 2011
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
This study seeks to focus on the methodological concerns found in intergenerational transmission of criminal behavior studies of children of incarcerated parents. In reviewing the literature it is evident that parental incarceration has a significant impact on children but unfortunately many of the studies suffer from methodological concerns that limit the generalizability of the findings and the ability to extend the origins of the antisocial behavior across generations. The concerns include 1) the lack of reliable data available 2) small sample sizes and lack of control groups 3) lack of variation in reporters of data 4) very little information about subjects before incarceration 5) the need for data related to high risk urban populations 6) the use of retrospective data, and 7) few studies the meet the criteria outlined by Thornberry.
