Given these principles, one way to examine “who” is contributing to the stability is to adopt Loeber’s [1982] approach of comparing how many initially high and low participants stay high or low. Huesmann and Moise [1998] did this with data from the first three waves of the Columbia County Study. We now apply this approach to the four waves of data. The participants on whom we had four waves of data were divided into those who scored low on aggression at all four time points (ages 8, 19, 30, and 48) and those who scored high on aggression at all four time points. Two different criteria are used: (1) above or below the overall median in a wave and (2) above or below the 33rd and 67th percentiles for a wave. (Of course, because only the complete data sample is used and more high aggressives disappear over time, the number below the median in any wave will be greater than the number above the median.)
