COMPOSITION AND SIZE OF SAMPLE: AGE
The average (median) individuals of the various groups ranged in age from twenty-six to fifty at the time they were interviewed (see Table 2). The relative antiquity of the two oldest groups, the incest offenders vs. minor and adult daughters, is prerequisite to their offense. These two apart, there is no serious “built-in” selectivity favoring age or youth in any of the other groups, and the age variations can be studied as elements associated with the offense behavior.
The youthfulness of the prison group, whose average member was twenty-seven, is in keeping with that in most penal institutions. This is our third youngest group.
The average control-group male was thirty-four when he contributed his case history. This places him in the middle of a rank-order of age: about half of the other individuals in this study were older than he, and half were younger. This age is also about the halfway point in life, (lie average age of death for U. S. males now being in the late sixties.
Since our interviewing has spread over two decades, a simple table of the ages of the men at the time of reporting is insufficiently descriptive. Consequently we have tabulated our sample according to decade of birth. A glance at Table 3 shows that we have essentially no one in our study who was born after the beginning of World War II; those who hope for enlightenment concerning current juvenile behavior are doomed to disappointment. Rather few in our sample were born in the decade 1930-1939. In only our younger groups—e.g., the aggressors vs. minors, the peepers, and the aggressors vs. adults—were one fifth or more of the members born in that decade.
The bulk of the sample derives from the three decades following the turn of the century: 1920-1929 accounts for roughly one third of the sex offenders and control group and two fifths of the prison group; 1910-1919 accounts for roughly one fifth to one quarter; and 1900-1909 was the birth decade for from 7 to 36 per cent of our control group and sex offenders. In the decades prior to 1900 one finds nearly one fifth of the control group, but fewer sex offenders (14 per cent) and still fewer of the prison group (11 per cent).
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