Identifying Psychopathic Traits in Young Offenders and in Community-Based Samples

Abstract

The emergence of psychopathy as a well-established construct in the assessment of adult criminal offenders has stimulated great interest in measuring psychopathy traits in adolescents. The most useful role for a brief measure of psychopathy might be self-report questionnaire. On the other hand, screening for adolescent psychpathy traits is a particularly sensitive undertaking, because the label Psychopath can influence treatment plans and juvenile justice determinations. Therefore, this study assesses the validity of the Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory (YPI), a self-reported measure of psychopathic traits in a Lithuanian offender population and in community-based adolescent sample. We assess the validity of the YPI by internal consistency analyses of scale and subscale item sets and the discriminant validity identifying psychopathic personality traits among incarcerated juveniles (N=207) compared with community – based population (N=276). Findings from this research suggested both strengths and weaknesses associated with YPI as a psychopathy assessment instrument in adolescent population.