No abstract

Youth self-reports are a mainstay of delinquency assessment. However, making valid inferences about delinquency using these assessments requires equivalent measurement across groups of theoretical interest. We therefore examined whether a brief 10-item delinquency measure exhibited measurement invariance across non-Hispanic White (n=6064) and Black (n=1666) youth (ages 10-11 years old) in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. We detected differential item functioning (DIF) in two items. Overall, Black youth were more likely to report being arrested or picked up by police than White youth of equivalent standing on the latent delinquency trait. Although multiple covariates (income, impulsivity, and callous-unemotional traits) reduced mean-level difference in overall delinquency, they had little effect on the DIF in the arrest item. However, the DIF in the arrest item was reduced in size and no longer significant after adjusting for neighborhood safety. Results illustrate the importance of considering measurement invariance when using self-reported delinquency scores to draw inferences about group differences, and the utility of measurement invariance analyses for identifying etiological mechanisms that may contribute to group differences.