Self-report statistics are data that are reported by individuals. These are gathered when people are surveyed and asked to report the number of times they may have committed a particular crime. The time frame is a set period in the past, regardless of whether the offender was caught or not. Monitoring the Future (MTF) is an ongoing study of the behaviors, attitudes, and values of American secondary school students, college students, and young adults. Each year, a total of approximately 50,000 eighth, tenth, and twelfth-grade students get surveyed. In addition, annual follow-up questionnaires are mailed to a sample of each graduating class for some years after their initial participation. The Monitoring the Future Study has been funded mainly by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a part of the National Institutes of Health. MTF is conducted at the Survey Research Center in the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.

3.6.1 Monitoring the Future

How do we get estimates on drug use amongst teens if most of them do not get caught? We rely on reports like the one from the Monitoring the Future (MTF). This is a long-term study of substance use among U.S. adolescents, college students, and adult high school graduates through age 60. The survey is conducted annually, which allows researchers to examine long-term trends. MTF findings identify emerging substance use problems, track substance use trends, and inform national policy and intervention strategies. Respondents are confidential, which means we cannot link their answers to them. Therefore, people may be more likely to tell the truth (Johnston, et. al., 2018).

3.6.2 In the Report: One Form of Drug Use Showed a Sharp Increase in Use in 2018

The most important findings to emerge from the 2018 MTF survey is the dramatic increase in vaping by adolescents. Vaping is a relatively new phenomenon, so we are still developing measures related to this behavior, which included asking separately for the first time in 2017 about the vaping of three specific substances—nicotine, marijuana, and just flavoring. There was a substantial increase in 2018 in the vaping of all three of the substances mentioned. The result includes some of the most substantial increases MTF has ever tracked for any substance. Given that nicotine is involved in most vaping, and given that nicotine is a highly addictive substance, this presents a severe threat (Johnston, et al, 2018).

Self-report statistics are helpful because they can point to problems researchers were unaware of, like vaping. Further, they help identify victimless crimes, or crimes in which there is no victim, such as drug use, gambling, and underage drinking. Lastly, they uncover offenses that are not as serious such as shoplifting, which are less likely to be known to police (Hindelang, et al., 1981).

However, self-report data also has its limitations. Respondents may exaggerate or underreport their criminal behavior for various reasons. For example, sometimes in class activities, many students don’t know that their behavior was illegal until the statute was read. They never thought that they committed a crime. Also, if poor statistical sampling methods are used, the survey responses may be skewed. If high schoolers are surveyed about substance abuse one afternoon, but the students who missed school that day weren’t surveyed, important data will be missing (Lab, et al., 2013).