SOCIOLOGY EDUCATION - American Sociological Association

378 Hirschfield
range from 1 (leave high school early) to 4
(finish college). Finally, the average number of
absences (per class) in the semester prior to
the reference date is the most proximate
time-varying selection factor and among the
strongest joint covariates of arrest and
dropout. Unfortunately, 61 percent of Year 1
arrestees and nonarrestees lacked data on
prior absences, which are available only during
high school. Still, including this measure
imposed tighter selection controls on estimates
of the effects of arrests on dropout.
Behavioral Factors Several other behavioral
risk factors for arrest and dropout were measured.
Self-reported acting out (Cook et al.
2000) was computed as the mean of 11 survey
items measuring the frequency of delinquency
(e.g., shoplifting, auto theft, gang
fight, hitting someone, damaging property),
school misconduct (e.g., skipping school, disciplinary
referral), and other conduct that
may invite police scrutiny (e.g., doing something
dangerous for fun) in the past year.
Responses ranged from 1 (never) to 5 (10 or
more). The average reliability (Cronbach’s
alpha) of this index across waves of the survey
is .87.
Substance use was measured as the mean
frequency of drinks of alcohol and episodes of
marijuana use in the past 30 days. Responses
ranged from “none” (1) to “more than 20” (7
for alcohol and 6 for marijuana). To help preclude
that offending predilections account for
differences in outcomes among arrested
youths, I used arrest-charge categories in the
first quasi-experiment. Drug, violenceweapons,
and property offenses constituted
nearly all first offenses, but only a violenceweapons
dummy variable was included in the
regressions. Drug and property charges were
unrelated to the arrest grade and early
dropout, respectively.
The final measure of delinquency, prior station
adjustments, is generally incorporated
into self-reported measures of arrest (Kirk
2006). A separate measure of station adjustments
is theoretically warranted because
these sanctions, during the study period, typically
entailed no more than a brief visit to the
police station, a referral to a social service
agency, and/or a stern warning (Illinois
General Assembly, 1998). Station adjustments
for minor offenses are the formal “warning
stage” en route to juvenile court referrals and
thus a systematic selection mechanism for formal
arrest. 10 Controlling for the number of
station adjustments helps ensure parity
between arrested and nonarrested youths in
their adjusted risk of more formal processing
(Cook et al. 2008). Station adjustments were
reliably measured in police records only until
February 15, 1997, necessitating the extensive
imputation of missing values (discussed
later).
Three other behavioral risk factors were
included. The share of delinquent friends was
the mean of three items (· = .81) asking about
the portion of the respondents’ friends who
damaged property, stole, and encouraged
lawbreaking in the past year. Values ranged
from 1 (none) to 5 (all). Next, a single item
queried how much time the respondents
spent “hanging out with a bunch of friends”
on a typical school day. Values ranged from 1
(none) to 6 (8 or more), with a mode of 3
(2–3 hours). Finally, anger control is a key
dimension of self-control that may forge a
spurious link between arrest and dropout
(Sweeten 2006), perhaps by aggravating the
risk of arrest from police encounters
(Hirschfield et al. 2006). Anger control is the
mean of four Likert scales that gauge how
often youths lose their temper or feel really
mad at others, are so upset that they want to
hurt someone, or are angry enough to break
something (· = .81). Values range from 1
(“everyday”) to 5 (“never”).
Contextual Factors Unlike prior studies in
this area, this study took into account neighborhood-
and school-level selection factors.
The first contextual control was derived from
a construct of concentrated disadvantage
developed for Chicago’s neighborhoods
(Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls 1997). For
each census tract, I standardized the construct’s
six dimensions of disadvantage (rate
per 100 persons living below the poverty line,
on public assistance, in female-headed families,
unemployed, younger than age 18, and
black) and averaged them, weighting each
variable by its factor loading (oblique rotation)
reported in Sampson et al. (1997).
Second, crime rates, which correlate positively
with dropout, were the yearly totals of index
crimes per 1,000 residents for the census tract
in which youths resided prior to their refer-