MMPI-A patterns of male juvenile delinquents.

Abstract

The usefulness of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-Adolescent(MMPI-A) (J. N. Butcher et al., 1992) was examined for 162 delinquent boys in a state training school. Their base rates, patterns, and configurations on all the MMPI-A scales and subscales were determined and compared with those of the 805 nondelinquent male adolescents in the MMPI-A standardization sample and with the original MMPI patterns of 7,783 delinquents identified in a literature review. The most prominent clinical scales were 4, 6, and 9, and 49/94 was the most frequent 2-point code. The study confirmed 14 of 18 hypotheses for mean differences on the 38 MMPI-A validity, clinical, supplementary, and content scales, and also found significant mean differences on 33 of the other 51 MMPI-A scales and subscales, 13 of which were large enough to be clinically meaningful. Most of the MMPI-A patterns and configurations were consistent with the literature on male juvenile delinquents.