School truancy rates and juvenile court cases in Harris County

Truancy and Court Appearances

The Relationship between School Truancy Rates and Court Cases

Research, albeit it clinical, case study, empirical, descriptive, historical, or any combination thereof, must exhibit and command interest, enthusiasm, and passionate commitment. The first step in the attainment of a desired research effort, one that convinces the reader as to the topic's efficacy and usefulness, is to develop a scientific approach toward the phenomenon under investigation. Second, a research investigator can only accomplish meaningful research if he or she is able to grasp the intimate and often difficult relations that exist between the research question and the research design and methodology of its solution. All research must be relational, structural, and architectural.

The desired research methodology selected for the current research investigation is descriptive in design wherein the overall relationship between school truancy rates and the number of court cases filed with the Harris County Juvenile Court System was examined both qualitatively and quantitatively. The descriptive methodology chosen was used to obtain information regarding the status of a phenomenon (school truancy) and used to describe what exists (number of juvenile court cases in Harris County) with respect to certain variables and conditions. The methods involved not only include a correlation analysis between the selected variables of the data but also an examination of the effects of certain other main effect and secondary effect variables (independent variables) on a the measured outcome (number of juvenile cases in the Harris County Juvenile Court). In order to garner the necessary data the following research assumptions were used as a basis for the study:

1. Truancy rates in the Harris County School system directly impacts the number of juvenile court cases recorded in Harris County.

2. Truancy rates in the Harris County School system and the number of cases filed in the Harris County Juvenile Court system is directly related to criminal behavior.

3. Truancy rates in the Harris County School system are multivariable affected by gender, grade level, socio-economic class, single parent family status, gang or peer affiliation, the ability the subject to communicate (self-disclose) to significant others, and parent involvement in school activities and events.

On the basis of the research assumptions presented above the following main effect research questions were formulated:

1. To what extent does there exists a statistically significant correlation or relationship between overall school truancy rates and court cases filed in Harris County, Houston, Texas.

2. To what extent is there a statistically significant relationship or correlation between school truancy and offensive criminal behavior?

3. To what extent does there exist a statistically significant relationship between truancy rates in the Harris County schools and school-parent efficacy?

The secondary research questions formulated for the present research investigation, and based on the aforementioned main effect research questions, were as follows:

1.

To what extent is there a statistically significant effect of gender, grade level, socio-economic class, single parent family status, gang or peer affiliation, and the ability of the subject to communicate (self-disclose) to significant others on Harris County School system truancy rates?

2.

To what extent is there a statistically significant effect of gender, grade level, socio-economic class, single parent family status, gang or peer affiliation, the ability of the subject to communicate (self-disclose) to significant others on Harris County Juvenile Court system cases?

3.

To what extent does the Harris County School system offer school students programs for the purpose of curbing school truancy?

As school environment efficacy is thought to affect the academic achievements of students as well as truancy rates, which in turn affects the entire juvenile court system and possible juvenile crime rates, the success of these students depends, therefore, on the collective school-parent efficacy within the Harris County School system. What becomes imperative, therefore, is that school-parent efficacy is rigorously examined to determine if a relationship exists between efficacy, truancy, court appearances, and juvenile crime rates.

This study's primary hypotheses, based on the need brought forth by the review of the literature and the research questions listed above, are that Harris County Schools who provide school-parent interaction also report lower truancy and juvenile court appearances. In contrast, schools that do not provide school-teacher efficacy situations will show an increased rate of school truancy and juvenile court appearances.

The study's primary null hypothesis will be that there would no statistically significant relationship or correlation between Harris County schools who provide school-parent efficacy situations and those schools who do not with respect to rate of student truancy and juvenile court appearances and juvenile crime. On the basis of a formulated main effect null hypothesis the following secondary null hypotheses will be tested:

Ho1: There will be no statistically significant effect at the .05 alpha level of gender on Harris School system truancy rates and juvenile court appearances and juvenile crime.

Ho2: There will be no statistically significant effect, at the .05 alpha level, of grade level on Harris School system truancy rates and juvenile court appearances and juvenile crime.

Ho3: There will be no statistically significant effect, at the .05 alpha level, of socio-economic on Harris School system truancy rates and juvenile court appearances and juvenile crime.

Ho4: There will be no statistically significant effect, at the .05 alpha level, of female based and intact family status on Harris School system truancy rates and juvenile court appearances and juvenile crime.

Ho5: There will be no statistically significant effect, at the .05 alpha level, of peer or gang affiliation and non-gang peer affiliation on Harris School system truancy rates and juvenile court appearances and juvenile crime.

Ho6: There will be no statistically significant effect, at the .05 alpha level, of the student's ability to communicate (self-disclose) to significant others Harris School system truancy rates and juvenile court appearances and juvenile crime as measured by the Jourard Self-Disclosure Questionnaire.

Definition of Terms

Throughout this research investigation the following list of terms and concepts will be used most extensively; therefore, in order to avoid any misunderstanding, they were operationally defined as follows:

Truancy Defined by the Harris County School system as

Gender. Male students and female students.

Intact family. Defined's a nuclear family consisting of one father, one mother and one or more biological off-spring.

Female-based family. A nuclear family which has undergone disunity through divorce or separation and the children remain with the mother.

Socio-economic class. SES refers to the measure of family wealth as determined by a family's income and perceived social position according to the Census Bureau.

Gang or peer related affiliation. Belonging to or not belonging to a known group.

Self-Disclosure. Defined as a person's ability to relate to others (Jourard, 1959).

School-parent efficacy. The extent to which a school provides parents active participation opportunities in a students learning process.

Measurement Reliability and Validity Factors

Internal validity refers to cause and effect relationships among the study variables. Because the survey instrument had been used in previous research studies (find an instrument that has been used in other states or change the wording to reflect that you are developing your own instrument), validity and reliability of these instruments had already been established. In cases where the researcher will conduct the research in person, the researcher will have the opportunity to explain any items that are not clear. This will bolstered the internal validity of the study. Further, as indicated above, internal consistency reliability analysis will be run on the exogenous variables and the dependent variable. This will add to the internal validity of the study itself.

There may exist some selection bias in this study given the schools from which the sample is chosen. Therefore, results will not be generalized to schools outside of the Harris County, or schools that differ from those included here. As discussed in the method of analysis section, statistical validity will be established in this study by addressing each of the related assumptions of statistical tests. For example, before running regression models, it will established that the variables are normally distributed, are related in a linear fashion, and there is homoscedasticity but no multicollinearity amongst the independent variables.

Population and Sample

The research investigator for the present research investigation will randomly select from Harris County 20 schools. From each participating school questionnaires and interviews will be conducted with respect to the variables under investigation. Collecting data from the court system will be limited to the juvenile division and all truancy records will be examined for the past 3 years. The sample required for the Jourard assessment will be a random sample of detainees (N=30).

Proposed Data Analysis Techniques

The data obtained from the two types of research methods (quantitative and qualitative) will be presented separately. First, scores of the participants from three research instruments will be statistically analyzed to determine the degree and direction of their correlation. Second, with the data obtained from the semi-structured interviews, this researcher will extract and categorize unique and common themes into different groups. The responses of the participants will then be presented under the heading of each of these major themes.

Analysis in this study will have two parts, the first being quantitative, and the second qualitative. A detailed discussion of the demographics of the sample will be provided along with descriptive statistics for all variables. Inferential statistics will begin with comparisons of means using an orthogonal analysis of variance. The ANOVA will be run to ascertain whether levels of the main study variables vary according to gender, socio-economic class, familial constellation, grade level, and gang-peer group affiliation. The other control variables are interval level so such tests are not appropriate.

Directional, bivariate correlation analyses will be conducted to ascertain associations among all study variables. Given that two of the study independent variables are dichotomous and all other study variables are measured at the interval level of measurement, Pearson's product moment correlation or zero order correlations will be employed.

The last step in the quantitative analysis involves producing ordinary least squares regression models to investigate the predictive nature of the independent. Prior to running the regression model, the investigator will present histograms of main study variables with normal curves to assess normality. Scatter plots will also be run to determine the linear nature of the relationships between the main study variables. Pearson's correlations will provide some indication of whether there is any multicollinearity between the study variables and we do expect to find some between teacher's age and experience. Variance inflation factors will be included in the regression model so that the influence of multicollinearity can be assessed.

In order to assess whether there is any heteroscedasticity in the regression model, analysis of regression residuals will be presented using residual plots, Breusch-Pagan tests and other tests if necessary. The investigator will also conduct regression diagnostic tests and alter the regression model as these diagnostics dictate. At each stage in the analysis, statistical assumptions of the tests run will be discussed.

The second part of the analysis is analysis of the qualitative data gathered from semi-structured interviews. Open coding will be employed and percentages and proportions will be presented in addition to discussion of the interview transcripts.