Time orientation of young male first offenders as a function of period of imporsonment and race

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to attempt to identify differences, or the lack of them, in time orientation of Caucasian, Black and Chicano young male first offenders at various stages or periods of imprisonment; namely, beginning, middle and end. The aim was to come to a clearer understanding of how the experience of imprisonment affects the temporal orientation of these trichotomized groups. Methods: The methods employed in this study were: (1) categorizing inmates by definitions of period of imprisonment, beginning, middle and end; and race, Caucasian, Black and Chicano; (2) controlling for age, I. Q. , sentence length, and socioeconomic status; (3) testing 180 inmates of the Ferguson Unit of the Texas Department of Corrections on two time orientation measures; namely, Shostrom's (1964) Time Competence scale of the Personal Orientation Inventory, iv and selected subscales of Wulff's (1969) Time Orientation Questionnaire (TOQ); (4) conducting an analysis of variance on the Time Competence scores, and the Time Orientation Questionnaire subscale scores; (5) computing correlation coefficients on all eleven (11) variables; and (6) considering all results at the . 05 or less level of significance. Findings: 1. This study indicates that there are highly significant differences of Time Competence scores by period of imprisonment. 2. There are no significant differences of TOQ Past scores. 3. There are significant differences of TOQ Present scores by period of imprisonment. 4. There are significant differences of TOQ Future scores by race. 5. There are significant relationships between I. Q. scores and responses, but no significant relationship between sentence lengths and responses. 6. Correlation coefficients between the Time Competence scale and the selected TOQ subscales, indicate that the TOQ subscales validly represent involvement and concern for the various time zones.