DOI: 10.3886/icpsr09293.v3
title: Delinquency in a Birth Cohort II: Philadelphia, 1958-1988
title: Version 3

description: The purpose of this data collection was to follow a birth cohort born in Philadelphia during 1958 with a special focus on delinquent activities as children and as adults. The respondents were first interviewed in DELINQUENCY IN A BIRTH COHORT IN PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA, 1945-1963 (ICPSR 7729). Part 1 offers basic demographic information, such as sex, race, date of birth, church membership, age, and socioeconomic status, on each cohort member. Two files supply offense data: Part 2 pertains to offenses committed while a juvenile and Part 3 details offenses as an adult. Offense-related variables include most serious offense, police disposition, location of crime, reason for police response, complainant's sex, age, and race, type of victimization, date of offense, number of victims, average age of victims, number of victims killed or hospitalized, property loss, weapon involvement, and final court disposition. Part 4, containing follow-up survey interview data collected in 1988, was designed to investigate differences in the experiences and attitudes of individuals with varying degrees of involvement with the juvenile justice system. Variables include individual histories of delinquency, health, household composition, marriage, parent and respondent employment and education, parental contacts with the legal system, and other social and demographic variables.
description: Datasets: DS0: Study-Level Files DS1: Demographic Cohort Data DS2: Juvenile Offense Data DS3: Adult Offense Data DS4: Survey of Young Adults: 1958 Philadelphia Birth Cohort Follow-Up DS6: Data Collection Instrument for Birth Cohort Follow-Up Data DS7: SAS Data Definition Statements for Demographic Cohort Data DS8: SAS Data Definition Statements for Juvenile Offense Data DS9: SAS Data Definition Statements for Adult Offense Data DS10: SAS Data Definition Statements for Birth Cohort Follow-Up Data
description: All children born in Philadelphia during 1958.
description: When using the Juvenile Offense file (Part 2), users should exclude from analyses any records of offenses committed when the offender was over 17 years of age. All records included in this file represent police contacts. Only a subset of these cases represent true offenses or violations of the Pennsylvania Crime Code. The variable EVENTYPE distinguishes between true offenses and cases that are police contacts only. The crime code fields can also be used to distinguish true offense charges from charges that represent police contacts only. Police contacts are those designated in the crime code value labels by an asterisk directly following the equal sign. For example, "1001 = COUNTERFEIT" represents a true offense, while "2624 = *RUNAWAY" represents a police contact only. To link the interview data from the survey file with either the juvenile delinquency history or adult criminal history databases, the user should utilize the LINKAGE DATABASE, provided in the Follow-Up Interview machine-readable codebook. A data collection instrument is available only for Part 4, the Follow-Up Interview data.Producers: Sellin Center for Studies in Criminology and Criminal Law and National Analysts, Division of Booz-Allen and Hamilton, Inc., Philadelphia, PA, 1990.