Juvenile Delinquency in Europe and Beyond: Results of the Second International Self-Report Delinquency Study

We report the results of the second self-reported juvenile delinquency survey (ISRD2), carried out in Italy 14 years after the first (ISRD1) survey (Gatti et al., 1994). The second survey differs from the first in some important respects: the questionnaire, which was drawn up by the international coordination group, has partly been changed, the sample surveyed is much larger and has been extended to 15 towns, as opposed to 3 in the first study; in addition, the current sample includes 7th-, 8th-, 9th-and 10th-grade students, while the 1992 sample comprised students from the 9th to the 13th grade. A comparison of the results of the two surveys is, therefore, particularly complex (though not impossible) and, for the moment, will not be considered. It should be pointed out that the mean age of the Italian sample is higher than that of most of the samples examined in the ISRD2 survey. This is because it includes the 10th grade, while the samples considered in the other countries are generally limited to the 7th, 8th and 9th grades. In order to compare the results of the Italian study with those of the other countries, it will therefore be necessary to exclude 10th-grade students from the analysis