In defining crime, Hirschi and Gottfredson favor a definition that involves “acts of force and fraud.” As a facet of the self-control theory, force and fraud are interpreted to be manifestations of the innate human tendency to satisfy one’s short-term interests. This study attempted to test the degree to which acts of force and fraud reflect a common underlying construct. Data were used from the first wave of the National Youth Survey administered in 1977 which employed a sample of 1,725 respondents between the ages of 11 and 17 probing a wide array of deviant behaviors. The findings from confirmatory factor analyses suggest that force and fraud cannot be viewed as manifestations of a single underlying construct. However, it suggests that multi-factor models of force and fraud improve significantly upon the fit of single-factor models. Force and fraud may therefore reflect overlapping, but empirically distinct constructs. Tables and references