No abstract

A total of 121 juvenile offenders assigned to a regional assessment center in Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada, for comprehensive psychological assessment between 1979 and 1984 were administered a test battery that included the WISC-R, the MMPI, and the Rorschach test. The offenders included 84 males and 37 females ages 12 to 15; among them were 48 Native Americans. In 1992, after a mean elapsed time of 9.9 years, all 121 were followed up and classified as either guilty ( n = 61) or not guilty ( n = 60) of a serious offense as an adult. Stepwise discriminant function analysis was used to find the best subset of variables with which to distinguish between the adults with a serious criminal record and those without. In order of importance, the four significant predictors selected from among 20 candidate variables were (a) the WISC-R comprehension subtest, (b) gender, (c) North American Native status, and (d) DQ+ from the Rorschach. A correct classification rate of 77.8% (as opposed to a base rate of 50.5%) was achieved, X2 (1) = 35.01, p<.001.

The diagnostic use of the KTSA requires the scorer to summate a series of decisions regarding both the level and type of abstractions present in a patient's verbal responses. Six case protocols were independently scored by five trained judges whose experience with the KTSA varied from six months to three years. Median phi coefficients for the nine scoring categories were :