Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Development Of Inventory Items To Measure Response Differences Of Delinquent And Nondelinquent Youths, Lionn Dean Kirk

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This study was designed to refine and validate a 160-item self-report instrument which drew its items from personality theories and from clinical practice related to delinquency. The aim was to estimate the usefulness of items descriptive of delinquent behavior by testing their reliability and discriminative power.

There were two objectives. First: to test a set of items for their power to discriminate delinquent from non-delinquent responses which referred to delinquent and nondelinquent behavior. Second, to validate the power of the selected set of items to discriminate delinquent from non-delinquent youths in a second mixed group. Both objectives were realized in …