Birth Order and Family Size of Approved School Boys

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Abstract
The birth order and family size of 799 Scottish Approved School boys were investigated. 37,587 Scottish boys were used for the purposes of comparison. They were 11 years of age when 1st surveyed by the Scottish Council for Research in Education in 1947. A random sample of 589 of them had been followed up for 17 years. The Slater index for estimating birth order in the sibship was used. The mean value of Slater''s index in the Approved School boys was 0.463 which was significantly lower than either the mean value of the controls (0.493) or the theoretically expected value (0.500) and indicated an excess of individuals coming early in birth order. Slater''s index did not alter significantly after the age of 10. The general lack of agreement about the relation between birth order and delinquency is probably due to a failure to use an effective method of dealing with the distribution of birth order; Slater''s index goes some way towards providing such a method. The fact that Slater''s index implies an ideal control population was considered a possible limitation to its usefulness in the context considered; the controls used in the investigation deviated from the ideal in having an excess of individuals coming early in birth order in family sizes 2 and 3. In the investigation of family size it was considered necessary to apply the correction described by Greenwood and Yule to the Approved School sample. This reduced the bias due to over-representation of individuals from large families in the sample. The corrected mean family size of the Approved School group was 4.03. A similar correction was not applied to the control group since this comprised almost a complete population of Scottish 11-year-old boys. The uncorrected mean family size of the controls was 3.75. There is no evidence from the present investigation of any association between family size and presence in an Approved School.