Operational Lessons from the Pathways to Desistance Project

• Author: Sandra H. Losoya,Laurence Steinberg,Edward P. Mulvey,George P. Knight,Thomas Hecker,Laurie Chassin,Elizabeth Cauffman,Carol A. Schubert
• DOI: 10.1177/1541204004265875
• Published date: 01 July 2004
• Date: 01 July 2004
• Subject Matter: Journal Article

10.1177/1541204004265875Youth Violence and Juvenile JusticeSchubert et al. / PATHWAYS TO DESISTANCE PROJECT

OPERATIONAL LESSONS FROM THE

PATHWAYS TO DESISTANCE PROJECT

Carol A. Schubert

Edward P. Mulvey

University of Pittsburgh

Laurence Steinberg

Temple University

Elizabeth Cauffman

University of Pittsburgh

Sandra H. Losoya

Arizona State University

Thomas Hecker

Temple University

Laurie Chassin

George P. Knight

Arizona State University

Implementing a large, longitudinal study of any sample is a major undertaking. The

challenges are compounded when the study involves multiple sites and a high-risk

sample. This article outlines the methodology for the Pathways to Desistance study, a

multisite, longitudinal study of serious juvenile offenders, and discusses the key

operational decisions with the greatest impact on the study design.

Keywords: juvenile delinquents; juvenile offenders; multisite study; participant retention;

operational issues; participant recruitment; longitudinal studies; data

collection; tracking participants; Pathways to Desistance; methods

Over the past 2 decades, a great deal has been learned about the risk indicators

associated with adolescent antisocial behavior and delinquency. Indeed, much has been

clarified about how delinquent behavior starts, the general trajectory of this behavior during

adolescence, and the relative predictive power of certain risk indicators (see, for example,

Blumstein, Cohen, Roth, & Visher, 1986; Cicchetti & Cohen, 1995; Farrington, 1997;

LeBlanc & Loeber, 1998; Loeber, Farrington, Stouthamer-Loeber, Moffitt, & Caspi, 2001;

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Authors’ Note: This project was funded jointly by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention

(grant #2000-MU-MU-0007), the National Institute of Justice (grant #1999-IJ-CX-0053), the John D. and

Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the William T. Grant Foundation, the Robert WoodJohnson Foundation, the

Centers for Disease Control, the William Penn Foundation, the Arizona Governor’s Justice Commission, and the

Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency.

Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, Vol. 2 No. 3, July 2004 237-255

DOI: 10.1177/1541204004265875

© 2004 Sage Publications

Moffitt, 1993; Sampson & Laub, 1990, 1997). One particularly important finding to emerge

from this literature is that relatively few adolescent offenders go on to serious adult

offending (Loeber & Farrington, 2000; Moffitt, 1993). Consequently, one of the most

pressing current challenges for the field is to reliably distinguish between juvenile offenders

who will continue problem behavior beyond adolescence and those who will not.

Successfully meeting this challenge requires a greater empirical understanding about

how and why juveniles desist from committing crime. Several calls have been made for

researchers to study desistance from criminal activity with the same vigor exerted toward

issues surrounding the onset of criminal activity (e.g., Farrington, 1997), yet the literature in

this domain remains scant. One comprehensive approach to understanding this process

would be to examine desistance from criminal activity prospectively, using multiple

sources of information beyond official reporting (Farrington, 1997). This approach would

be guided by the literature on child and adolescent development, and sensitive to the

potential implications of findings for designing interventions and developing rational

justice policies.

The Pathways to Desistance Project highlighted in this special edition is an attempt to

take up this challenge. It is a large-scale, two-site longitudinal examination of desistance

from crime among adolescent serious offenders. The goal of the current study was to

elucidate how developmental processes, social context, and intervention and sanctioning

experiences affect the process of desistance from crime. The current study employed a

prospective design with a broad measurement focus and multiple sources of information

(self-report, collateral report, and official record) to provide a picture of intraindividual

change over time. The goals of the current study are to provide a rich description of changes

in functioning, psychological development, and social context among adolescent serious

offenders during late adolescence, and to assess the effects of maturation, changes in social

context, and sanctioning and intervention experiences on positive and negative changes in

behavior, psychological functioning, and the transition into adult roles.

This article describes some of the key practical and logistical challenges we found

most salient for maintaining the integrity of the original intent of the current study. Some

issues that we faced are generic to multisite longitudinal research (e.g., enlisting funding

partners, obtaining clearances from site research ethics review boards that do not always

interpret guidelines in the same way) and will not be discussed here. Instead, here we

address the subset of issues we confronted that, although not unique, had the greatest impact

on the study design and the study’s eventual interpretability. The hope is that this

information will be useful to researchers confronting the challenges associated with making

valid, scientific inferences in a complex research venue. In the subsequent sections of this

article, we present an operational overview of the Pathways study, discuss specific

challenges to the implementation of the project (as well as the strategies used to meet these

challenges), and summarize the implications and lessons that can be drawn from our

experience.

Operational Overview of the Pathways Study

Recruitment

The Pathways study sought to recruit a sample of adolescent offenders with

sufficiently serious charges and histories to be relevant for policy discussions, but with

238 Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice