OCR A2 Psychology G543 Forensic student style answers with commentaries

Many psychologists have attempted different explanations of criminal behaviour. One of these explanations is upbringing in a disrupted family. Juby & Farrington conducted a study which aimed to disentangle the links between family disruption and delinquency. The participants and data which were used were from Farrington’‛s large longitudinal ‘Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development’‛, which followed up 411 London males from age 8 to age 4850, in order to investigate risk factors in offending. The study by Juby & Farrington involved 75 WhiteBritish males born around 1953, who grew up in an inner city area of London and came from disrupted families and a comparison group of 344 WhiteBritish males born at the same time and who grew up in the same location, who came from intact families. The disrupted and the comparison groups were roughly similar in terms of age, ethnicity and social class (mainly working-class) and came from the same location, since all the boys were participants in Farrington‘s large longitudinal study. The dependent variables measured were the number of adult convictions of the P’‛s, the number of juvenile convictions of the P’‛s & the number of self-reported juvenile delinquencies. Results of the study showed that when comparing the data of both groups (disrupted family & intact family) there was a higher percentage scored on each of the three measures of the dependent variable of criminality in the disrupted family group than the intact family group. Also, amongst the P’‛s in the disrupted families, higher percentages were scored on each measure of criminality if the P’‛s mother was absent, compared to when the mother was present. This answer directly addresses the impact of upbringing in a disrupted family on criminality. The answer is detailed and accurate ( e.g. description of disrupted and comparison samples) and well elaborated ( explains the three different measures of criminality used by Farrington and Juby and also provides data to show that the effect of family ‘disruption’ depends on whether it is the father or the mother who has left home). The answer is well structured and highlights the researchers’ conclusions in relation to the research question.