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11 J. Res. Crime & Delinquency 1 (1974)

handle is hein.journals/jrcd11 and id is 1 raw text is: Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency VOLUME 11 JANUARY 1974 NUMBER 1 The Adequacy of Differential Association Theory 1 REED ADAMS Director, Law Enforcement and Administration Program, University of North Carolina at Charlotte Ph.D. (Sociology/Criminology), 1971, Florida State University Differential association has been the most widely disseminated of the criminological theories, yet has remained untested. An in- novation in the intellectual life of the theory has suggested a means of testing its adequacy but not its validity. Recent papers have suggested that the theory is inadequate by its failure to con- sider nonsocial (noninteractive) determinants of behavior. This paper reports a review of empirical studies which allow the effects of social and nonsocial independent variables to be contrasted and a randomized two-factor design experiment of the effect of a social and a nonsocial variable on theft behavior. Both the experiment and the literature review suggest that nonsocial variables should be considered by theories of human behavior. The evidence does not support differential association theory. D IFFERENTIAL ASSOCIATION, generally recognized as a sociological/ earning theory, has attracted more attention over a longer period of time than any other criminological theory. Yet, the theory remains essentially un- tested, as researchers have been unable 1. Support for this paper was provided 'by National Institute of Law Enforcement 'nd Criminal Justice Grants NI-150 and NI-71081GF4 and by the cooperation of the State of Florida Division of Youth Services. Such support does not necessarily indicate concurrence with statements or conclusions ,kptained therein. Jon Bailey, H. J. Vetter, Peter Lewis, Harry Allen, Edward Malm- gren, Patrick Michaud, Vernon Fox, and Douglas Zahn provided valuable advice and assistance. However, only the author is re- sponsible for the final document. '. I to adequately operationalize the the- ory's concepts. Previous attempts to test the theory have attempted to cor- relate some measure of delinquent be- havior with the degree to which the subjects associated with criminal pat- terns.2 Those studies have revealed 2. V. M. Matthews, Differential Identifi- cation: An Empirical Note, Social Prob- lems, 15:376-383, 1968; A. J. Reiss and A. L. Rhodes, An Empirical Test of Differential Association Theory, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 1:15-18, 1964; J. F. Short, Jr., Differential Association and De- linquency, Social Problems, 4:233-239, 1957; J. F. Short, Jr., Differential Association with Delinquent Friends and Delinquent Behav- ior, Pacific Sociological Review, 1:20-25, 1958; J. F. Short, Jr., Differential Asso- ciation as a Hypothesis: Problems of Em-

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