Personality Characteristics of Institutionalized and Non-Institutionalized Male Delinquents

The data presented in this article are designed to show how institutionalized delinquents differ from non-institutionalized delinquent in selected personality characteristics in the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory.

Abstract

The author is Professor of Sociology in the University of Minnesota. The data he presents in this article are designed to show how institutionalized delinquents differ from non-institutionalized delinquents in selected personality characteristics. The instrument employed in the study of these characteristics is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. Groups of institutionalized and non-institutionalized delinquents as well as groups of non-delinquents are compared on the basis of the mean or average scores achieved by such groups on the several scales of the Inventory. The degree to which the differences in average scores made on the several scales may be regarded as significant is determined by employing the critical ratio of the difference. This ratio suggests whether observed differences in mean scores may be ascribed to the operation of chance. When a critical ratio equals 2 it is roughly interpreted to mean that an observed difference in two measures would occur by chance only 5 times in 100. When a critical ratio of a difference of 3 is obtained and the number of measures is fairly large we may be reasonably confident that such a difference is not due to chance.-EDITOR.