an examination of the factor structure of the psychopathy checklist
an examination of the factor structure of the psychopathy checklist an examination of the factor structure of the psychopathy checklist
Abstract Female youth are a strikingly understudied population within the accumulated forensic literature which is particularly troubling since adolescent females represent a significant and growing population within forensic contexts. The Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL:YV; Forth, Kosson, & Hare, 2003) was created to assess psychopathic traits among adolescents, which include interpersonal deceptiveness, affective deficits, and impulsive, antisocial tendencies. However, to ensure its proper use, the underlying factor structure of the PCL:YV must be determined. The primary purpose of this thesis was to examine whether the two-factor, three-factor, or four-facet model is most appropriate for female youth. This is the first study to simultaneously examine all three of the primary factor models among a North American sample of violent female youth offenders. Results demonstrated that the three-factor model is the best-fitting of the three primary PCL:YV factor models among violent female youth offenders. Further, the extant research has repeatedly demonstrated a relationship between the presence of psychopathic traits and instrumental aggression, however, researchers have only recently begun to examine this relationship among juvenile offenders, and females have often been excluded or represent only a small proportion of mixed samples. A secondary goal of the current thesis was to examine the relationship between psychopathy total, factor, and facet scores and instrumental aggression in a sample of female offenders. Contrary to previous studies on male youth, results revealed that female youth with psychopathic traits were not significantly more likely to use instrumental violence in the commission of their violent crimes. Findings and their respective research and clinical applications are discussed. ii
Preface Ethics approval for this research was granted by the University of British Columbia’s Behavioural Research Ethics Board on June 25 th , 2010. The ethics certificate number is: H10-00683. iii
- Page 1: AN EXAMINATION OF THE FACTOR STRUCT
- Page 5 and 6: 3 Results .........................
- Page 7 and 8: List of Tables Table 1 Confirmatory
- Page 9 and 10: Acknowledgements I owe my deepest g
- Page 11 and 12: To my family and friends, Thank you
- Page 13 and 14: among female youth populations, the
- Page 15 and 16: Third, it has been suggested that t
- Page 17 and 18: only a small proportion of conduct-
- Page 19 and 20: irresponsible, and antisocial tende
- Page 21 and 22: A long line of research has demonst
- Page 23 and 24: females. When a model is considered
- Page 25 and 26: to do with whether the measure is w
- Page 27 and 28: Understanding the factor structure
- Page 29 and 30: (Leschied et al., 2001; Moretti, Ca
- Page 31 and 32: psychopathic offenders were signifi
- Page 33 and 34: instrumental aggression. However, w
- Page 35 and 36: Given the relationships between the
- Page 37 and 38: associated with self-report will be
- Page 39 and 40: 1.4.1 Hypotheses The current thesis
- Page 41 and 42: ecords, school records, medical rec
- Page 43 and 44: 2.2.3 Instrumental-Reactive Coding
- Page 45 and 46: eceiving services from YFPS. Althou
- Page 47 and 48: 3 Results 3.1 Coding Reliability In
- Page 49 and 50: This was followed by acquaintance v
- Page 51 and 52: Figure 2. Percentage of cases by se
Preface<br />
Ethics approval for this research was gr<strong>an</strong>ted by <strong>the</strong> University <strong>of</strong> British<br />
Columbia’s Behavioural Research Ethics Board on June 25 th , 2010. The ethics<br />
certificate number is: H10-00683.<br />
iii