NCJ Number
77431
Date Published
1979
Length
79 pages
Annotation
Methodology and findings are reported from a survey of members of State Juvenile Advisory Groups to determine their opinions about information needs in a variety of juvenile justice topics.
Abstract
In addition to members of State Juvenile Advisory Groups, questionnaires were sent to related staff or members of analogous ad hoc State groups in the fall of 1978. Respondents were asked to indicate the importance of obtaining more information on various aspects of the following topics: juvenile status offenders, serious juvenile offenders, violent crimes, prevention, diversion, law enforcement, courts, probation, corrections, administration and funding, evaluation and research, youthful offenders, juvenile vandalism, confidentiality, and juvenile statutes and codes. A total of 1,342 questionnaires were sent, and 893 questionnaires were returned for a 66.5 percent response rate. No replies were received from Virginia, Wisconsin, or South Dakota. Some 893 respondents expressed at least a moderate need for information about all of the topics listed. Prevention and diversion emerged as the topics about which most information was needed, followed by juvenile status offenders and serious juvenile offenders. Respondents' age, sex, and place of residence did not strongly affect their absolute ratings; however, in the Q-sort, the technique used to obtain the relative rankings, the relative importance attached to information about serious juvenile offenders increased with respondent age; women perceived information about juvenile status offenders as more important than did men, and men perceived information about violent crimes as more important than did women. Appended are the questionnaire, the mean subtopic scores within major topic areas, mean topic ratings by profile variables, and distribution of Q-sort ratings for 15 major topics. Tabular data and footnotes are provided.