In my investigation I am trying to find out what the main influence of delinquent behaviour in young people today. My aims of this investigation are to find out:
* What aspects of the media influence young people?
* What acts are classed as delinquent and what are the most common delinquent acts Delinquent behaviour is behaviour that is anti-social and is against the norms in society today. The media is the main means of mass communication regarded collectively such as newspapers, magazines, TV etc. I think the aims will be easy to achieve as using my questionnaires and articles on the internet it will be easy to find information from a wide range of sources. I think that this information will show that what societies views on young peple and anti social behaviour and personally I believe the reason commit delinquent behaviour is due to peer pressure and inadequate primary socialisation. Statistics state that 29% of young people say they have committed a crime in the past year. The home office states that the average number of 10-17 year olds committing crime is 1.12 and for over 18’s 1.05. Research over recent years has found some factors that are likely to increase the chance of youths becoming involved in offending. There are some risk factors that increase the chances of younger people committing crimes. These are things such as peer pressure, being unsupervised, parental criminality, depression. Anders Breivik, the Norwegian who killed 77 people, claimed earlier this year that he had played video game Call of Duty to train himself, this suggesting that playing violent video games influenced him into commit delinquent behaviour. Methodology
For my primary data I gave out questionnaires to 25 people, I wrote the questionnaire out myself so i could get information valuable to my research, also I gave them to people I know such as homeoffice.gov.uk and dailymail.co.uk.) This is good useful information directly and gave some for people to give people so I have a wide range of information. I used this method because it directly answered the question I was asking and it wasn’t too vague. I find it easy to collect information because the questionnaires because they were easy to hand out and I got them back in a short amount of time so I could then get into the investigation and analysis. For my secondary data, I used the internet (websites as it has been gathered together by professionals and by the government. However, it is hard to find useful information on the internet considering the UK and not the USA. Primary research is research that does not already exist and research that I’ve conducted myself. Secondary research is research is data that already exists. When designing the questionnaire I had to consider ethnic issues as I didn’t want to offend anyone. Also, I didn’t address religion as this could also be seen as disrespectful in some way. I made sure my questionnaire didn’t go into too much detail about issues such as drugs, alcohol abuse or violence as this could also antagonize some people. I stated at the top of my questionnaire in bold writing that it was strictly confidential so people could fully express their opinion without worrying about whether someone would judge them or whether someone would pass on the information to any other parties. The limitations of doing a questionnaire were that some people would rush the questionnaires as they wanted them to be completed in as little time as possible. There were limitations in this area as people didn’t read the questions properly, as they were in a rush, then didn’t complete the question/questionnaires to their full ability. Also, I found it difficult to ask all the questions I wanted answers in just 10-15 questions (including those about age, ethnicity etc). In addition, I also found some people missed out questions, I found this...