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date: 24 June 2021

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter addresses methods to study situational influences of setting characteristics on adolescent offending. In particular, it describes data collection methods (space-time budget interviews, census data, community surveys, and systematic social observations) that enable precise measurement of what respondents do, with whom they undertake these activities, and in what kind of places (both the geographical area and the function of the location) they find themselves. Such data capture presence in and exposure to different kinds of settings during particular periods in time. This chapter illustrates the usefulness of these method for criminological research by summarizing the results of three sub-studies from the Study of Peers, Activities, and Neighborhoods (SPAN) conducted in the Netherlands. It first discusses the design of the SPAN data collection and the instruments that were used in it. It then reviews each study in turn by summarizing its theoretical motivation, data structure, and analytical strategy, and by describing the main findings it has generated.

Keywords: environmental criminology, data collection, SPAN project, Netherlands, criminological research

Frank M. Weerman

Frank M. Weerman is Senior Researcher of the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement in Amsterdam, and Professor of Youth Criminology at the Erasmus University, Rotterdam, the Netherlands. His research interests focus on explanation of juvenile delinquency, in particular on the role of peers, groups, and contexts.

Evelien Hoeben

Evelien M. Hoeben recently received her PhD from the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement and VU University Amsterdam. She currently works as an Assistant Professor at the School of Criminal Justice at the State University of New York at Albany. Her research interests include peer influences on adolescent behavior, group dynamics, and situational explanations for deviance.

Wim Bernasco

Wim Bernasco is a senior researcher at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement and a Professor in the Department of Spatial Economics at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His research interests include offender travel behavior, target selection, and situational causes of offending and victimization.

Lieven J. R. Pauwels

Lieven J. R. Pauwels is Professor of Criminology at Ghent University, Department of Criminology, Criminal Law and Social Law and Director of the Institute for International Research on Criminal Policy. He is interested in the integration of developmental, ecological, and situational theories, measurement problems in quantitative criminology, and the philosophy of science.

Gerben J.N. Bruinsma

Gerben J. N. Bruinsma is the former Director and nowadays Senior Researcher of the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement in Amsterdam, and Professor Emeritus of Environmental Criminology at the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology of the Faculty of Law of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His current interests are environmental, theoretical, and historical criminology.

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