an examination of the factor structure of the psychopathy checklist

associated with self-report will be avoided, and arguably lead to a more refined
delineation of motivation for violence.
1.4 Goals of the Current Study
The current study was designed to extend the existing literature on youth
psychopathy and violence through the examination of female offenders. More
specifically, I endeavoured to evaluate the relationship between the best-fitting of the
three main models of the PCL:YV (Forth et al., 2003) and instrumental aggression
among a large sample of female adolescents with a history of violent offending.
The present thesis aimed to accomplish three main objectives. First, I sought to
evaluate the construct validity of the two-factor, three-factor, and four-facet models of
the PCL:YV. This was necessary since only two studies have looked at the factor
structure of the PCL:YV with a female adolescent sample (e.g., Jones et al., 2006;
Sevecke et al., 2009). Jones et al.’s (2006) analysis was exploratory and did not test all
three models among their American sample, and although all three models were tested
by Sevecke et al. (2009), their German sample may not be applicable to Canadian
female youth offenders. Further, an understanding of a measure’s underlying factor
structure is necessary for proper interpretation, and especially critical if dimensions of a
multidimensional construct are differentially related to external variables such as
violence (Reise, 1999). Following from this first objective, I also wanted to determine
whether psychopathic traits were related to the use of instrumental aggression among a
sample of generally violent female youth. To gain a more refined understanding of the
dimensions of psychopathy that may be related to instrumental aggression, this thesis
examined not only the PCL:YV total scores, but also the factor and facet scores. Given
26