Upon interviewing a sample of youths, researchers who study exposure to violence are often faced with a substantial number of reports of exposure to violence and no way to confirm the veracity of these claims. The remarkably high levels of violence exposure reported by young preschool children (Richters & Martinez, 1990), paired with the low concordance between parents and children concerning what violence the child had witnessed and experienced (Howard, Cross, Li & Huang, 1999; Shahinfar, Fox & Leavitt, 2000), suggests that child self-reports of exposure to violence may not be entirely veridical. Since self-reports appear to be the only feasible method of measuring lifelong exposure to violence, determining the possible causes of false reports and investigating possible predictors should be a significant aspect of studying youth exposure to violence. With this thesis, I have investigated the veracity of child self-reports by comparing responses to a life-long exposure to violence questionnaire administered first between 1997 and 1999, and a second time two years later. Inconsistent reports, wherein an initial report of exposure to a particular violent instance was not confirmed by re-reporting at the second interview, were prevalent on a variety of violence-assessment items, including witnessing a murder and being the victim of a physical attack. For instance, when initially interviewed, approximately one in seven Chicago children aged 8 to 17 reported witnessing a shooting at least once during their lives. Alarmingly, 50% of these children did not confirm this instance of violence when interviewed again two years later. In an effort to identify self- or parent-reported characteristics and behaviours predictive of inconsistent responses concerning witnessing a shooting, I conducted several series of Binomial and Multinomial Logistic Regression analyses. Explanatory
variables were selected to be representative of two main likely reasons for inconsistent
self-reports: misremembering due to forgetting over time and the inaccuracy of children's
memories, and misinformation due to an impulsive propensity towards lying or exaggeration. My findings suggest that, in comparison to individuals who confirmed their initial reports of having 'witnessed a shooting', individuals who retracted their initial claims were generally younger, from a higher socio-economic status level neighbourhood, admittedly lacked guilt after misbehaving, desired a lot of attention, and reported less impulsivity as measured by delinquency and behavioural impulsivity scales. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/21142 |
| Date | 07 1900 |
| Creators | Beneteau, Jennifer L. |
| Contributors | Daly, Martin, Wilson, Margo, Psychology |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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