https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5095-7893
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Abstract
In the past decade, desistance research has attracted immense research attention, which has necessitated the clarification of the overall picture of desistance research in terms of methodology, definition, and theory. Using the systematic quantitative literature review method, we seek to provide an overview of English-written peer-reviewed journal articles on desistance from 2011 to 2020. Analysis of 196 studies reveals that despite an almost equal quantitative–qualitative divide in desistance research, there is skewness in terms of research location, sample size, and usage of operationalization and theory. Based on these findings, we suggest the future direction of desistance research.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 For this reason, we only offer descriptive statistics. Additionally, as our SQLR results offer the ‘population’ of desistance studies rather than a ‘sample’, inferential statistics would be inappropriate (c.f., Leclair et al., 2021: 8).
2 A link to the entire list of identified studies is available at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GQdWPBtdRiksEuO1J3wBIJCAgTvql5Kc/view.
3 We also attempted to create a database for the follow-up period. However, because the follow-up period was not clearly mentioned in many studies, we were unable to do so. As a consequence, we encountered difficulty in delineating the degree of overlap between primary desistance investigations and studies concerning recidivism, which employ a binary measure to gauge the success or failure of reentry.
4 Another possibility is that we targeted English-written desistance research. While we speak a different language, we limited our search to English in order to be fair to other languages.