Attitudes About Behavior
Developed for the Pittsburgh Youth Study (Loeber,
Stouthamer-Loeber, van Kammen & Farrington, 1991 and 1998). Pittsburgh
Youth Study, The Department of Psychiatry of the University of Pittsburgh
School of Medicine, 3811 O'Hara Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15213.
Abstract
The Attitudes About Behavior measure is a 16-item measure
that assesses the youth's tolerance regarding a variety of delinquent
behaviors ranging from skipping school, to stealing, assault, and
substance use. The items are rated on a four-point scale from 1=not
wrong at all to 4=very wrong.
The data was fairly skewed towards the end of the scale (very wrong),
especially for the items pertaining to a more serious type of offense.
Loeber et al. (see reference) developed two subscales: attitude
towards substance use, containing items 12 to 16 and attitude towards
delinquency, containing items 1 to 11, with the exception of item
# 4 (having sexual intercourse). A summary mean score was created
for each of these subscales.
The items were also subjected to an exploratory factor analyses
with principal component, using promax rotation. Three eigenvalues
greater than the commonly used 1.0 cutoff were detected. An examination
of the 2-factor and 3-factor structure showed that the third factor
only contained 3 items and did not have a well-defined conceptual
meaning. The two-factor solution, divided the items in a group of
serious offenses (steal $50, breaking and entering, joyriding, assault,
robbery, smoking, drinking, drug use and selling) and a group of
less serious offenses (skip school, lie/disobey, damage someone
else's things, sexual intercourse, steal something worth $5, fights).
Because of the high inter-subscales correlations, it is recommended
that the analyst use of the total score for analyses, unless there
is a specific interest in differentiating between severities, or
of type of behavior.
Keywords: Delinquent Behavior, Tolerance, Expectations, Smoking,
Alcohol, Sexual Intercourse, Theft, Substance Abuse.
Administration History
See study
years administered.
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11 October 2004
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