The personality characteristics of delinquents, miscreants, and status-offenders.

Abstract

Past psychological research pertaining to juvenile offenders has been primarily concerned with offenders as a group, or homogeneous unit. In this study three legally subdivided juvenile offender groups, the delinquents, miscreants, and status-offenders, were investigated to determine if there were significant psychological differences among them. The testing instrument utilized in this investigation was the revised Jr.-Sr. High School Personality Questionnaire (HSPQ), developed by Cattell and Beloff in 1962. The HSPQ was administered to sixty, twelve to eighteen year old juvenile offenders divided equally into delinquents, miscreants, and status-offenders, based on the seriousness of their offense. There were ten males and ten females in each group. The analysis of variance test and the least significant difference technique were the statistical procedures utilized for data analysis. Analysis of the data indicated that there were no significant differences between delinquents, miscreants, and status-offenders as measured by the HSPQ. There were differences computed between males and females on two factors of the HSPQ. There was also an interaction effect. However, relative to the entire protocol, these differences proved fairly slight. Consequently, the results of this investigation indicate that the legal subdivisions of delinquents, miscreants, and status-offenders are not representative of psychologically distinct sub-categories of juvenile offenders.