ABSTRACT
This chapter shows which explanatory variables are related to boys’ delinquency and how these variables vary with age. To validate our measure of delinquency, we first show the interrelationship between the delinquency seriousness scale (described in chap. 3) and official records of juvenile court petitions for offenses. We then explain our dichotomization of the delinquency seriousness scale and how we narrowed down the array of potential explanatory variables by distinguishing these from variables more likely to be correlates of delinquency. All the analyses from now on are based on unweighted data; the equivalence of weighted and unweighted results is investigated in the Methodological Appendix. Also discussed in this appendix is whether dichotomized variables lead to similar findings as continuous variables. Additionally, we consider whether the explanatory variables for delinquency are similar at different ages.
