Delinquency and Victimization in a National Internet Sample of Adolescents: A Methodological and Theoretical Study of Versatility and Overlap

Researchers have increasingly come to realize the need for alternative sampling frames and interview methods for the study of adolescent misconduct and victimization. Traditional methods, such as school-based and household-based samples, have limitations, and adolescent behaviors, including delinquency and victimization, increasingly occur in online environments. These issues, among others, have fostered interest in alternative methods for sampling and interviewing teens, in both causal and policy-centered research. This paper reports initial results from an internet-based self-report study, a companion project of a school-based international study (Marshall et al., 2022). We explore several methodological issues with these data, including the measurement of delinquency and victimization via the internet, response biases, and contrasts between in-school and not in-school respondents. We address empirical and theoretical issues concerning overlaps between offline and online delinquency and between delinquency and victimization in offline and online contexts, using Modern Control Theory (MCT). Results are highly encouraging for use of internet samples, and the data show important overlaps between delinquency types and between delinquency and victimization in both online and offline contexts. Results are generally consistent with expectations of MCT, providing support for the validity of our internet-based sample.