Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development [Great Britain], 1961-1981 (ICPSR 8488)
Version Date: Nov 4, 2005 View help for published
Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s)
David P. Farrington
https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR08488.v2
Version V2
Summary View help for Summary
This data collection effort, initiated by Dr. Donald J. West and continued by Dr. David Farrington, was undertaken to test several hypotheses about delinquency. The investigators examined socioeconomic conditions, schooling, friendship, parent-child relationships, extracurricular activities, school records, and criminal records. They also performed psychological tests to determine the causes of crime and delinquency. Information in the survey includes reports from peers, family size, child-rearing behavior, job histories, leisure habits, truancy, popularity, physical attributes, tendencies toward violence, sexual activity, and self-reported delinquency.
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Subject Terms View help for Subject Terms
Geographic Coverage View help for Geographic Coverage
Distributor(s) View help for Distributor(s)
Time Period(s) View help for Time Period(s)
Date of Collection View help for Date of Collection
Data Collection Notes View help for Data Collection Notes
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A knowledge of British criminal justice terminology would be helpful for those using the data. Various British governmental and law enforcement institutions are mentioned. Variables concerning the socioeconomic status of respondents, schools attended, and personality characteristics use code explanations that are not fully documented. The principal investigator has offered to consult with researchers on the use of the data. Contact Professor David Farrington, Institute of Criminology, 7 West Road, Cambridge CB3 9DT, England.
Sample View help for Sample
The major part of the sample was chosen by taking all boys aged 8-9 who were on the registers of six state primary schools located within a one-mile radius of a research office that had been established.
Universe View help for Universe
Population of young male children from a working-class urban area in Cambridge.
Data Source View help for Data Source
personal interviews
Data Type(s) View help for Data Type(s)
HideOriginal Release Date View help for Original Release Date
1986-08-18
Version History View help for Version History
- Farrington, David P. Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development [Great Britain], 1961-1981. ICPSR08488-v2. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 1994. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR08488.v2
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.
1986-08-18 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.
Notes
The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public. Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.

This dataset is maintained and distributed by the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD), the criminal justice archive within ICPSR. NACJD is primarily sponsored by three agencies within the U.S. Department of Justice: the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the National Institute of Justice, and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.