Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

12-1984

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Psychology

Major Professor

Robert G. Wahler

Committee Members

Dennis Freeman, Kenneth Newton, Priscilla White

Abstract

This study attempted to elucidate the relationship between the endorsement of obvious, subtle, and neutral MMPI Pd subscale items and reported delinquency histories of adolescents as obtained from case history records. It was hypothesized that those subjects with reported histories of more seriously delinquent behaviors would tend to endorse subtle MMPI Pd items to a greater extent than either Pd-obvious or Pdneutral items. Case history records of 103 adolescents admitted to the Section for Comprehensive Screening of Youth of Topeka State Hospital were examined for instances of juvenile offenses. These offenses were rated as to their "severity" on the Depth of Delinquency Index (DDI), on the Sell in and Wolfgang Index, and according to the total number of offenses recorded in various categories. The dependent variables in the study consisted of the obvious, subtle, and neutral subscales of the Psychopathic Deviate (Pd) scale of the MMPI.

The 103 subjects were divided as to sex and adjudicative status (delinquent, miscreant, status, or deprived), and product-moment, partial, and multiple correlation analyses were performed to determine the relative contribution of each index of offense seriousness to each subscale. As a means of discovering whether a weighted combination of indices might have the strongest relationship to a weighted combination of MMPI Pd subscale scores, a canonical correlational analysis was also performed.

The results of this study did not support the hypothesis about the predicted strong relationship between seriousness of delinquency and MMPI Pd subtle item endorsement. Although some statistically significant relationships were obtained, the correlation coefficients were low, accounting for less than 6% of the total variance, and therefore were considered to be of little practical clinical utility. A trend did emerge in which individuals who were described in case history records as more seriously delinquent tended to endorse fewer items on the Pd subtle and obvious subscales. This pattern suggested that the more delinquent subjects in the present study may have been trying to minimize admissions of pathological behavior.

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