Over the years, previous research has confirmed a high incidence of communication problems among male and female juvenile delinquents. Researchers have documented challenges in a broad range of communication skills including articulation, fluency, semantics, morphology, and syntax (Cozad; Falconer). Basically these findings resulted from assessment procedures that relied primarily on standardized tests rather than analyses of conversational skills or other means of assessing how individuals use language functionally in their everyday social interactions. Standardized speech …showed first 75 words of 2003 total…

…showed last 75 words of 2003 total…communication behaviors. First the researchers collected data over a relatively short time period of two and one-half months. Most likely a longer period of data collection would have produced a larger amount of data, more participant observation, and would have allowed closer relationships to be established with the study participants. Secondly, observations, interviews, and a review of documents support ethnographic data collection methods (Creswell and Hammersley). Of course, participant observation would have most likely strengthened