Critique of Risk Factor Research
Two UK academics, Stephen Case and Kevin Haines, among others, criticized risk factor research in their academic papers and a comprehensive polemic text, Understanding Youth Offending: Risk Factor Research, Policy and Practice.
The robustness and validity of much risk factor research is criticized for:
- Reductionism - e.g. over-simplfying complex experiences and circumstances by converting them to simple quantities, relying on a psychosocial focus whilst neglecting potential socio-structural and political influences;
- Determinism - e.g. characterising young people as passive victims of risk experiences with no ability to construct, negotiate or resist risk;
- Imputation - e.g. assuming that risk factors and definitions of offending are homogenous across countries and cultures, assuming that statistical correlations between risk factors and offending actually represent causal relationships, assuming that risk factors apply to individuals on the basis of aggregated data.
Read more about this topic: Juvenile Delinquency
Famous quotes containing the words critique of, critique, risk, factor and/or research:
“Wagner’s art is the most sensational self-portrayal and self- critique of German nature that it is possible to conceive.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“In its artless cruelty, Dallas is superior to any “intelligent” critique that can be made of it. That is why intellectual snobbery meets its match here.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“It’s a funny thing, the less people have to live for, the less nerve they have to risk losing—nothing.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“Children of the middle years do not do their learning unaffected by attendant feelings of interest, boredom, success, failure, chagrin, joy, humiliation, pleasure, distress and delight. They are whole children responding in a total way, and what they feel is a constant factor that can be constructive or destructive in any learning situation.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)
“Our science has become terrible, our research dangerous, our findings deadly. We physicists have to make peace with reality. Reality is not as strong as we are. We will ruin reality.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)