title: Performance of delinquent and nondelinquent high schools boys on the Rotter Incomplete Sentence Blank.
abstract: This study compared 30 delinquent adolescent boys who had been placed in a residential treatment center with 30 randomly selected high school boys on the Rotter Incomplete Sentence Blank (Rotter). For each group a maladjustment score was computed. The results indicated a significant difference between the two groups' mean maladjustment scores on the Rotter. A cut-off score was established that made it possible to correctly identify 73% of the normals and 60% of the residential treatment group. An item analysis was carried out between the two groups to see whether certain sentence stems discriminated between the two groups. Fourteen sentence stems were found to discriminate significantly between the groups. From these sentence stems a short form of the Rotter was established with a revised maladjustment score that correctly identified 82% of the boys in each group. A cross-validation of the short form with 48 high school boys and 67 delinquents supported its use as 75% of the high school boys and 80% of the delinquents were correctly identified.
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D006801:Humans; D007604:Juvenile Delinquency / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D010556:Personality Tests / Q000379:methods*; D012917:Social Adjustment