International Criminology - Call for papers! "Comparability and Measurement Invariance in Comparative Criminology"

International Criminology welcomes the submission of abstracts and manuscripts for consideration for a new special issue on "Comparability and Measurement Invariance in Comparative Criminology," which will be Guest-Edited by Daniel Seddig (this opens in a new tab) (University of Cologne, Germany), Heinz Leitgöb (this opens in a new tab) (Leipzig University, Germany), and Dirk Enzmann (this opens in a new tab) (University of Hamburg, Germany). 

Comparative criminological studies across nations, cultures, or time require that the phenomena being studied are comparable. The comparability of not-directly-observable criminological constructs, measured by multiple indicators (e.g., self-control, morality, attitudes and intentions toward committing, perceived risk of arrest and sanctions, legal cynicism, fear of crime), can be assessed by testing for measurement invariance (or differential item functioning) before proceeding with comparisons of construct characteristics. In addition, non-invariant measurement properties can themselves be the subject of investigation to improve measurement instruments and survey designs. 

This special issue aims to include substantive and/or methodological studies that contribute to the following areas of comparative criminological research:

• Measurement invariance testing of criminological constructs across groups or time
• New developments in measurement invariance testing methods (e.g., invariance alignment, Bayesian SEM, regularized estimation)
• Assessment of non-invariance and its causes using, for example, multilevel SEM, clustered mixture MGCFA, visualization techniques, decomposition techniques
• Survey methodological approaches and developments that are applied before data collection involving, for example, rating scale and survey mode choice, cognitive pretesting, web probing, cross-cultural scale adoption, and translation methods

Deadline

Submissions are due by March 31st, 2024. Publication of the special issue is planned for December 2024. The Guest Editors welcome contact with prospective submitters prior to formal submission. 

Submission guidelines

Submitted manuscripts must be original and must not be under consideration for publication elsewhere. Instructions on formatting rules, citation style, length, and other requirements are set out here (this opens in a new tab). 

Manuscripts will be reviewed on a double-blind basis by independent referees, per the journal’s standard evaluation process. Approval of abstracts does not guarantee acceptance and publication, nor does the submission process itself. The editors will base their final decisions on the relevance to the special issue, technical quality, innovative content, and originality of research approaches and results. Once the peer-review process is completed, accepted papers will be published on the International Criminology home and later assigned to the special issue of the journal.

Submissions should be made online via Editorial Manager (see https://www.editorialmanager.com/incr). To ensure your paper is considered for this special issue, reply “yes” when asked during submission whether it is intended for a special issue, and select the relevant title from the drop-down menu. You may also wish to mention the special issue in your cover letter.

International Criminology is the journal of the Division of International Criminology (ASC). It is a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal publishing work on international, comparative and global criminology and criminal justice. Articles in International Criminology are engaged with and motivated by theory and draw on any of the diverse methodological approaches from the social sciences broadly construed.

We look forward to considering your abstracts and manuscripts!