Minnesota Youth Poll: Youth's Views on Reputations & Delinquency

Abstract

The Minnesota Youth Poll provides an ongoing method by which youth in Minnesota can state their opinions, experiences, and values regarding such issues as youth rights, health, career aspirations, drug and alcohol abuse, education, crime and delinquency, and government. This Poll, in contrast to more standard opinion polls, focuses on the meanings and frames of reference that young people use to understand their world. Our goal in conducting the Poll is to learn about the range of ideas and opinions held by the wide variety of youth in Minnesota. To preserve the richness of what the young people said, we have not attempted to quantify their responses. Readers will not find tables of numbers or percentages of yes and no responses, as they would find in other opinion polls which use standard survey research techniques. Rather, the data is treated as themes or pictures in an attempt to retain both "the music and lyrics" of what the young people said. In this issue of the Poll, young people's ideas and concerns about delinquency and reputations are explored. Because this topic is so broad, we have divided the Poll into two parts. Part One focuses on how high school students perceive "reputations' '-how reputations are acquired and their role and impact on the lives of adolescents. Second, the relationship between reputations and delinquency is explored with the emphasis on how teenagers view the causes and treatment of delinquency. Part Two will explore specific issues about delinquency-status offenses,juvenile prostitution, teenage runaways, violent juvenile offenders, and youth's rights. A new feature of this Poll is the inclusion of an international perspective. Several schools in Ireland participated in this Poll on reputations and delinquency, and these findings are reported on pages 33-36.