title: Assessment of psychopathic traits in an incarcerated adolescent sample: a methodological comparison.
abstract: Analyses of convergent validity and group assignment using self-report, caregiver-report and interview-based measures of adolescent psychopathy were conducted in a sample of 160 incarcerated adolescents. Results reveal significant convergent validity between caregiver-report measures of adolescent psychopathy, significant convergent validity between self-report measures of adolescent psychopathy and an interviewer rating scale, but not between the caregiver-report measures and their corresponding self-report measures nor between the caregiver-report measures and the interviewer rating scale. Analyses of group assignment were also poorer than expected among all the measures with none evidencing significant agreement with the expert-rated device (Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Youth Version; PCL-YV), the most common forensic instrument used in clinical practice. Part of the poor agreement may be related to the poor psychometric performance of the callous-unemotional subscale of most of these measures and the low response rates from caregivers (N = 35). These findings suggest that the measures do not provide an interchangeable assessment of callous-unemotional traits and suggest that further refinement of the measurement of callous-unemotional traits in youth may be warranted.
authors.affiliation: The Mind Research Network, Albuquerque, NM, USA. bcfink@unm.edu
authors.forename: Brandi C
authors.initials: BC
authors.lastname: Fink
authors.forename: Adam S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Tant
authors.forename: Katherine
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Tremba
authors.forename: Kent A
authors.initials: KA
authors.lastname: Kiehl
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000987:Antisocial Personality Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis*; D017028:Caregivers; D003415:Crime / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010555:Personality Inventory; D011329:Prisoners; D057566:Self Report; D015206:Southwestern United States; D055815:Young Adult