Differentiating delinquent youths for program planning and evaluation

There is general agreement that delinquent youths are not all alike and, co nsequently, cannot be expected to respond to a given program in the same wa y. Program effects may be positive or negative, depending on person-program interactions. The aim of this article is to introduce a method for creatin g treatment-relevant typologies that can be continually developed and linke d to outcomes within the context of an information system. To increase unde rstanding of interactions between programs and client outcomes, a typology of clients was created based on 14 personality scales, using scores obtaine d at the point of program admission. This article reports on the methods us ed to construct the typology, the substance of the classification system, a nd the steps that are being taken to ensure its continued development. It a lso emphasizes the advantage to typology development of ongoing access to a n information system that includes recidivism and other outcome data.