Attitude Toward Delinquency survey

Abstract

The Attitude Toward Delinquency survey (commonly operationalized in developmental criminology as the Attitude Toward Delinquency – Pittsburgh Youth Study [ATD-PYS]) is an 11-item psychometric instrument designed to assess youth moral evaluations, normative acceptance, and cognitive tolerance of antisocial and criminal behaviors. Originally adapted and implemented within the landmark Pittsburgh Youth Study led by Rolf Loeber, David P. Farrington, Magda Stouthamer-Loeber, and Welmoet B. Van Kammen, the measure evaluates how “wrong” adolescents perceive a spectrum of infractions, ranging from minor status violations and authority conflict to severe predatory violence and felony property theft. Evaluated on a 4-point rating scale (“Very wrong,” “Wrong,” “A little wrong,” and “Not wrong at all”), the items are reverse-scored such that higher aggregated scores indicate a greater tolerance, moral neutralization, or acceptance of delinquent conduct. Extensive psychometric evaluations across longitudinal cohorts demonstrate high internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha ranging from .82 to .91 across developmental waves), robust convergent validity with peer delinquency and conduct disorder diagnoses, and strong prospective predictive validity for subsequent arrest, violent offending, and chronic delinquency trajectories. Factor analytic studies confirm either an overarching unidimensional “general delinquency tolerance” construct or an empirically supported bifactor structure parsing nonviolent/covert property violations from overt aggressive/violent offenses. As an open-access public health instrument cataloged by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the survey serves as a vital tool in juvenile justice assessments, school-based delinquency intervention screenings, and longitudinal etiologic investigations.

Keywords

Attitude Toward Delinquency, Pittsburgh Youth Study, juvenile delinquency, moral neutralization, antisocial attitudes, conduct problems, risk assessment, violent offending, psychometrics, criminogenic cognitions, social cognitive theory, adolescent development

Authors

The Attitude Toward Delinquency survey was developed and validated by the principal investigators of the Pittsburgh Youth Study:

• Rolf Loeber, Ph.D. (1942–2017) – Professor of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine; Co-Director of the Life History Program.
• David P. Farrington, Ph.D. – Emeritus Professor of Psychological Criminology, Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.
• Magda Stouthamer-Loeber, Ph.D. – Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
• Welmoet B. Van Kammen, Ph.D. – Research Associate and Methodologist, Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh.

Correspondence regarding the original longitudinal study archives may be directed to the Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, or via the historical repositories of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP).

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Attitude Toward Delinquency survey is to quantitatively capture an adolescent’s internalized cognitive and moral tolerance of unlawful, disruptive, and aggressive acts. In developmental criminology and juvenile forensic psychology, antisocial behavior rarely emerges in a cognitive vacuum. Instead, overt acts of law-breaking are reliably preceded and reinforced by attitudes that minimize the harm of offending, reject conventional moral norms, and neutralize societal prohibitions. Understanding the degree to which an individual views specific acts of theft, vandalism, truancy, and physical violence as morally permissible is critical for both theoretical modeling and clinical intervention.

From an applied clinical perspective, the ATD-PYS functions as an early screening mechanism within multi-tiered systems of behavioral support (MTSS), alternative education settings, and juvenile diversion programs. Elevated delinquency acceptance scores identify youth who have internalized procriminal attitudes, enabling targeted cognitive-behavioral therapies (CBT) such as Aggression Replacement Training or moral reconation therapy. Rather than relying solely on official arrest records or retrospective behavioral reporting, which capture delinquency only after societal detection has occurred, measuring attitudes enables proactive identification of latent antisocial propensity before minor noncompliance escalates into serious violent offending.

In academic research, the instrument addresses critical hypotheses regarding developmental pathways. The Pittsburgh Youth Study utilized this measure across multiple longitudinal waves to delineate how cognitive shifts interact with peer selection, parental monitoring deficits, and neighborhood disorganization. By offering a psychometrically stable, continuous index of normative beliefs about rule-breaking, researchers can model reciprocal relationships: assessing whether delinquent peer association induces moral rationalizations, or whether early delinquency attitudes drive youth to seek out like-minded antisocial peer groups.

Psychological Construct

The psychological construct assessed by the ATD-PYS is normative delinquency acceptance or procriminal cognitive appraisal. Within psychological criminology, this construct captures the extent to which an individual neutralizes standard moral sanctions against rule violations and perceives antisocial actions as justifiable, inconsequential, or acceptable.

Historically conceptualized through Gresham Sykes and David Matza’s techniques of neutralization, delinquency acceptance reflects cognitive mechanisms through which individuals insulate themselves from guilt or social censure prior to committing delinquent acts. The 11 items of the scale deliberately span three distinct gradations of antisocial deviance:

• Authority Conflict and Status Violations: Reflected in behaviors such as unexcused truancy (Item 1: Skip school without an excuse?) and defiance toward adult authority (Item 2: Lie, disobey or talk back to adults such as parents, teachers, or others?). In developmental models, authority conflict represents the foundational, entry-level tier of deviance, capturing an adolescent’s rejection of institutional and parental legitimacy.
• Covert Property Offenses and Theft: Spanning minor to major economic crimes, this dimension assesses the progressive moral threshold required to violate another person’s property rights. The scale contrasts petty theft (Item 4: Steal something worth less than $5?) with intermediate theft (Item 5: Steal something worth $50?), major grand larceny (Item 6: Steal something worth $100?), property destruction (Item 3: Purposely damage or destroy property that did not belong to him?), joyriding (Item 8), and residential/commercial burglary (Item 7: Go into or try to go into a building to steal something?). Psychometrically, this progression establishes a Guttman-like hierarchy where tolerance of petty theft represents widespread, less severe deviance, whereas acceptance of burglary or high-dollar theft reflects severe property-related delinquency orientation.
• Overt Aggression and Violent Predation: Encompassing interpersonal physical attacks (Item 9: Hit someone with the idea of hurting that person?), severe weapon-carrying attacks (Item 10: Attack someone with a weapon or with the idea of seriously hurting that person?), and predatory armed robbery (Item 11: Use a weapon, force, or strong-arm methods to get money or things from people?). Acceptance of these behaviors signifies an erosion of basic empathy and socialized prohibitions against severe interpersonal violence.

Rather than treating delinquency as a monolithic binary (delinquent vs. non-delinquent), the construct measured by the ATD-PYS operationalizes antisocial cognition as a dimensional spectrum. A youth may hold moderate tolerance toward truancy and minor dishonesty while continuing to strongly condemn armed robbery and violent weapon attacks. Conversely, chronic violent offenders display generalized cognitive tolerance across the entire behavioral hierarchy.

Theoretical Framework

The Attitude Toward Delinquency survey is anchored in three synergistic psychological paradigms: Social Learning Theory, Social Cognitive Theory, and Loeber’s Developmental Pathways Model.

Ronald Akers’ Social Learning Theory posits that delinquent behavior is acquired, sustained, and modified through four central mechanisms: differential association, differential reinforcement, imitation, and definitions. Definitions represent an individual’s subjective moral attitudes and evaluative orientations toward behaviors—specifically, whether an action is perceived as right or wrong, permissible or impermissible. In Akers’ model, procriminal definitions act as cognitive catalysts that lower internal inhibitions against committing crime. When definitions favorable to law-breaking outweigh definitions unfavorable to it, criminal acts become substantially more probable. The ATD-PYS provides an explicit psychometric operationalization of these evaluative “definitions.”

Albert Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory and his subsequent formulations of moral disengagement further explain the cognitive mechanics measured by this scale. Moral disengagement entails cognitive reframing that decouples internal self-regulatory sanctions from aggressive conduct. Mechanisms such as moral justification, euphemistic labeling, and minimization of consequences allow individuals to engage in injurious actions without experiencing moral distress or self-condemnation. An adolescent who rates weapon attacks or extortion as “not wrong at all” or “a little wrong” exhibits severe moral disengagement, stripping potential victims of normative protections.

Finally, the scale was built directly upon Rolf Loeber’s Three-Pathway Model of juvenile antisocial behavior, which delineates: (1) an authority conflict pathway (stubbornness, defiance, authority avoidance), (2) a covert pathway (minor shoplifting, property destruction, serious theft), and (3) an overt pathway (minor aggression, physical fighting, severe violent crime). The ATD-PYS was deliberately constructed with balanced operational coverage across all three developmental pathways, allowing researchers to evaluate whether cognitive acceptance in one specific behavioral pathway precedes behavioral progression along that same developmental trajectory.

Validity

The validity of the Attitude Toward Delinquency survey has been established across decades of longitudinal empirical research, most notably through the Pittsburgh Youth Study, the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development, and subsequent urban youth cohort studies:

• Construct Validity: Construct validity is evidenced by the scale’s alignment with developmental escalation models. In multi-cohort studies (Grades 1, 4, and 7 followed prospectively into adulthood), mean scores on delinquency acceptance increased monotonically as youths approached mid-adolescence (ages 14–16), matching the epidemiological peak of the aggregate age-crime curve, before stabilizing or declining in emerging adulthood.
• Convergent Validity: Scores on the ATD-PYS correlate strongly with established external measures of antisocial behavior and peer deviance. Significant correlations have been documented between delinquency acceptance scores and self-reported delinquency inventories ($r = .48$ to $.62, p < .001$), teacher-rated externalizing behavior on the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL; $r = .35$ to $.45$), and affiliation with delinquent peers ($r = .52, p < .001$). Youths who express high delinquency acceptance consistently display lower levels of moral reasoning maturity and reduced empathy scores on standardized psychosocial indices.
• Predictive and Longitudinal Validity: Longitudinal prospective modeling has repeatedly demonstrated that baseline delinquency acceptance predicts future arrest, chronic police contact, and self-reported felony offending over 1-, 3-, and 5-year follow-up intervals, even after controlling for baseline behavioral offending, socioeconomic status, and parental supervision. In Cox proportional hazards survival models conducted by Loeber and colleagues (1998), high scores on the ATD-PYS conferred an adjusted relative risk of 2.15 ($95% \text{ CI } [1.62, 2.85]$) for subsequent violent felony conviction before age 24.
• Discriminant Validity: The measure demonstrates discriminant separation from internalizing psychopathology, displaying non-significant or weak correlations with adolescent depression scales ($r = .08$, non-significant) and generalized somatic anxiety indices ($r = .04$), confirming that the tool specifically evaluates externalizing moral cognitions rather than global psychological distress.

Reliability

The psychometric reliability of the Attitude Toward Delinquency survey has been rigorously documented across multiple demographic strata, ethnic backgrounds, and age cohorts:

• Internal Consistency: In the primary normative samples of the Pittsburgh Youth Study (comprising over 1,500 boys across initial 1st, 4th, and 7th grade cohorts), the 11-item total scale demonstrated robust internal consistency. For adolescent cohorts (grades 7 through 12), Cronbach’s coefficient alpha ($\alpha$) consistently ranged from .84 to .89. In independent community validation samples compiled in the CDC Compendium of Violence-Related Assessment Tools, internal consistency coefficients ranged between .82 and .91, indicating high item homogeneity and minimal measurement error.
• Test-Retest Stability: Over 6-month test-retest intervals during early adolescence, the scale exhibited a stability coefficient of $r_{tt} = .71$ ($p < .001$). Over a one-year follow-up window, stability remained moderate-to-high at $r_{tt} = .63$, reflecting both trait-like consistency in core normative evaluations and sufficient sensitivity to capture developmental or experiential fluctuations (e.g., changes following legal sanction or positive behavioral intervention).
• Split-Half and Item-Total Reliability: Corrected item-total correlations across the 11 items range from $.42$ (for minor authority conflict items such as lying/talking back) to $.74$ (for serious property and violent infractions such as armed robbery and weapon attacks), confirming that each individual item contributes meaningfully to the overall delinquency acceptance latent construct.

Factor Analysis

Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) have been conducted on the ATD-PYS across diverse samples, providing structural clarity on how adolescents mentally categorize rule-breaking behaviors:

Initial principal axis factoring with promax rotation reliably yields two primary, moderately correlated factors ($r \approx .58$), accounting for over 56% of total variance:

1. Factor 1: Overt / Violent Predatory Delinquency: Comprising Items 9, 10, and 11, with secondary cross-loadings from Items 3 and 8. Item loadings on this aggressive factor are exceptionally high, with Item 10 (Attack someone with a weapon) and Item 11 (Armed robbery) loading at $lambda = .81$ and $lambda = .84$, respectively.
2. Factor 2: Covert / Property and Authority Delinquency: Comprising Items 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, and 7. Item 4 (Steal under $5) and Item 5 (Steal $50) exhibit robust factor loadings ($\lambda = .68$ to $.79$). Item 1 (Truancy) and Item 2 (Disobey adults) form the lower threshold of this factor, displaying moderate loadings ($\lambda = .44$ to $.52$).

Subsequent confirmatory factor analyses examining alternative structural configurations demonstrate that a Bifactor Model (a general “Delinquency Tolerance” factor alongside two group factors representing “Overt Aggression” and “Covert Offending”) exhibits superior fit to the data compared to a strictly unidimensional model:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): .968
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): .955
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): .042 ($90% \text{ CI } [.033, .051]$)
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): .034

Because the general factor accounts for more than 75% of the common variance (Explained Common Variance; $\text{ECV} = .76$), researchers and clinicians are psychometrically justified in utilizing the total summated scale score as a unidimensional composite of global delinquency acceptance.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Attitude Toward Delinquency – Pittsburgh Youth Study (ATD-PYS)
• Alternative Titles: Attitude Toward Delinquency survey; PYS Delinquency Belief Scale
• Construct Assessed: Normative acceptance, moral tolerance, and cognitive approval of delinquent, disruptive, and violent behaviors
• Target Population: Children, adolescents, and emerging adults (ages 7 to 25; validated predominantly on middle school, high school, and justice-involved youth)
• Format & Administration: Self-report paper-and-pencil questionnaire, structured interview, or computer-assisted self-interview (CASI)
• Administration Time: Approximately 3 to 7 minutes
• Item Count: 11 items
• Response Scale: 4-point Likert-type scale scored as:
  • Very wrong = 3
  • Wrong = 1 (as original response hierarchy in coding manual; see scoring protocol below)
  • A little wrong = 2
  • Not wrong at all = 0
• Scoring and Directionality Protocol:
  • All 11 items ask the respondent how wrong it is for someone of their age to engage in each specific behavior.
  • Reverse Scoring: Items are reverse-coded prior to composite summation such that higher numerical values systematically denote greater acceptance/tolerance of delinquent conduct.
  • Recoded Metric: Not wrong at all = 3, A little wrong = 2, Wrong = 1, and Very wrong = 0 (or standard reversal transformations depending on source survey numbering).
  • Total Score Calculation: Sum of all 11 recoded items, yielding a possible score range from 0 to 33. Higher scores indicate elevated antisocial tolerance, severe moral neutralization, and higher prospective delinquency risk.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

• Year of Initial Publication: 1998 (Loeber, Farrington, Stouthamer-Loeber, & Van Kammen)
• Primary Archival Source: Published within the seminal monograph Antisocial Behavior and Mental Health Problems: Explanatory Factors in Childhood and Adolescence (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates).
• Public Domain & Compendium Inclusion: Cataloged as a non-proprietary public health instrument by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Dahlberg et al. (2005), Measuring Violence-Related Attitudes, Behaviors, and Influences Among Youths: A Compendium of Assessment Tools (page 33).
• Fees & Licensing: Free of charge. No licensing or commercial royalty fees are required for academic research, non-profit clinical evaluation, or educational use. Attribution to the original Pittsburgh Youth Study research team is mandatory.

References

• Akers, R. L. (1998). Social learning and social structure: A general theory of crime and deviance. Northeastern University Press.
• Bandura, A. (1999). Moral disengagement in the perpetration of inhumanities. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3(3), 193–209. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327957pspr0303_3
• Dahlberg, L. L., Toal, S. B., Swahn, M., & Behrens, C. B. (2005). Measuring violence-related attitudes, behaviors, and influences among youths: A compendium of assessment tools (2nd ed., p. 33). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/YV_Compendium.pdf
• Loeber, R., Farrington, D. P., Stouthamer-Loeber, M., & Van Kammen, W. B. (1998). Antisocial behavior and mental health problems: Explanatory factors in childhood and adolescence. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781410603098
• Loeber, R., Menting, B., Lynam, D. R., Moffitt, T. E., Stouthamer-Loeber, M., Stallings, R., Farrington, D. P., & Pardini, D. (2012). Findings from the Pittsburgh Youth Study: Cognitive impulsivity, moral neutralization, and antisocial pathways. In The Development of Criminal and Antisocial Behavior (pp. 41–62). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08720-7_3
• Sykes, G. M., & Matza, D. (1957). Techniques of neutralization: A theory of delinquency. American Sociological Review, 22(6), 664–670. https://doi.org/10.2307/2089195

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)