PRELIMINARY VALIDATION OF THE MMPI-A FOR A MALE DELINQUENT SAMPLE - AN INVESTIGATION OF CLINICAL CORRELATES AND DISCRIMINANT VALIDITY

Adolescent psychopathology, until recently, has been a largely neglect ed area of research and poses unique challenges for psychological asse ssments, in response to the specific need for adolescent-focused measu res, the MMPI-A (Butcher et al., 1992) was among several measures to b e developed. Although a sizeable literature exists on the original MMP I (Hathaway & McKinley, 1943) and adolescent populations, relatively f ew empirical studies have been published on the MMPI-A. The primary pu rpose of this study was the examination of clinical correlates for the MMPI-A for a male delinquent sample. MMPI-A protocols were collected from 99 adolescents at a North Texas juvenile correctional facility, a nd systematic comparisons were conducted between the Basic Scales and symptoms/diagnoses derived from the Schedule of Affective Disorders an d Schizophrenia for School-Age Children (K-SADS-III-R; Ambrosini, Metz , Prabucki, & Lee, 1989). Using only K-SADS-III-R symptoms with high r eliabilities (rs >.80), a comprehensive list of correlates was generat ed for the Clinical, Supplementary, and Content Scales. Additionally, stepwise discriminant functions successfully classified MMPI-A protoco ls according to K-SADS-III-R diagnoses. As an exploratory analysis, et hnic differences on MMPI-A profiles were also investigated, revealing significant differences among groups.