Delinquency in a Birth Cohort in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1945-1963 (ICPSR 7729)

Principal Investigator(s): Wolfgang, Marvin E.; Figlio, Robert; Sellin, Thorsten

Summary: The purpose of this study was to investigate the history of delinquency in a birth cohort--in particular, the age of onset of delinquent behavior and the progression or cessation of delinquency. Data were collected on a cohort of males born in 1945 and residing in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Information provided in the study includes demographic characteristics of the individuals studied, academic performance, offense information, demographic characteristics of victims of offenses, and criminal ... (more info)

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Wolfgang, Marvin E., Robert Figlio, and Thorsten Sellin. Delinquency in a Birth Cohort in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1945-1963. ICPSR07729-v3. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 1994. doi:10.3886/ICPSR07729.v3

Persistent URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR07729.v3

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This survey was funded by:

• United States Department of Health and Human Services. National Institutes of Health. National Institute of Mental Health (1-R11-01252-01 NIMH)

Summary:   The purpose of this study was to investigate the history of delinquency in a birth cohort--in particular, the age of onset of delinquent behavior and the progression or cessation of delinquency. Data were collected on a cohort of males born in 1945 and residing in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Information provided in the study includes demographic characteristics of the individuals studied, academic performance, offense information, demographic characteristics of victims of offenses, and criminal incident information.

Subject Terms:   arrest records, biographical data, crime, criminal justice system, delinquent behavior, police response, social attitudes, youths

Geographic Coverage:   Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, United States

Time Period:  

• 1945--1963

Date of Collection:  

• 1964

Universe:   Boys who were born in 1945 and lived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from the ages of 10 to 18.

Data Types:   event/transaction data

Data Collection Notes:

In the individual file (Part 1), the sequence id numbers range from 1 to 11,172, then skip to 20,000 and range to 20,131. In the offense file (Part 2), the sequence id numbers range from 1 to 3,534, then skip to 11,111 and range to 11,172. The individual file therefore has 11,303 total sequence id numbers representing 11,303 individuals, of which some are offenders and some are nonoffenders. The sequence id number in the individual file links to the sequence id number in the offense file, where only offenders are documented. There are 3,595 total offenders, but since some offenders have multiple offenses, the total number of offenses is 10,214.

Data Source:

records from public, private, and parochial schools in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and records from the Philadelphia Police Department's Juvenile Aid Division

Extent of Processing:  ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

• Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Original ICPSR Release:  1984-03-18

Version History:

• 2006-01-12 All files were removed from dataset 3 and flagged as study-level files, so that they will accompany all downloads.
• 2006-01-12 All files were removed from dataset 3 and flagged as study-level files, so that they will accompany all downloads.
• 2005-11-04 On 2005-03-14 new files were added to one or more datasets. These files included additional setup files as well as one or more of the following: SAS program, SAS transport, SPSS portable, and Stata system files. The metadata record was revised 2005-11-04 to reflect these additions.

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