Objective : At the present time in Korea, for a considerable proportion of children and adolescent, delinquent behavior and violence has become as a way of life in their lives and a major social problem issue as well. The one of the contributing factors to this problem was assumed to be the personality characteristics. Therefore, this study was done to develop an instrument for measuring personality factor related to juvenile delinquency.
Methods : This study was methodological re-search for developing a personality factor scale related to juvenile delinquency. Through the relevant literature review and individual interview using open-ended question with adolescents in school, out-patient basis and juvenile corrective institution, the authors developed questionnaire with 45 items for measuring personality characteristics.
For assessing this questionnaire, statistical methods employed were reliability (test -restest re-liability), internal consistency, items analysis, con-tent validity, factor analysis for construct validity and t-test for mean difference between students and delinquent adolescents, using SAS program. Subjects served for this study consisted of 2,177
adolescents including 1,206 students and 971 delinquent adolescents by proportional stratified random sampling method.
Results : 1. Five stable factors were extracted and these contributed 44.9% of the vairance in the total score. All 45 items loaded above .40 on each factor.
2. Factor I was named as sociability(11 items), factor II was named as psychosomatic symptoms (10 items), factor H] was named as antisocial personality tendency (10 items), factor IV was named as depressive trend(9 items), and factor V was named as level of ego respect (.15 items).
3. Comparison of these 5 factors between student adolescents and delinquent adolescents showed that there was a significant difference in factor I [ (t = - 4. 00(student), - 4.03 (delinquent), p=.0001)], factor II [t= - 12.01 (student), -12.05(delinquent), p=.00001, factor 1H[t=- 13.72 (student), -13.08(delinquent), p=.00001, factor N[t=-2.12(student), -2.12(delinquent), p=.00001, factor V [t = -8.94 (student), -8. 92(delinquent), p=.00001 and total score[t=-12.55 (student), -12.36(delinquent), p=.0001).
4. Internal consistency reliability was tested by cronbach a. Cronbach a was .899 for total 45 items and .854, .864, .835, .808 and .787 for each 5 factors of personality characteristics related to delinquent behavior.
Conclusions : The authors concluded that this scale has a high validity and reliability for measuring personality factor related to juvenile delinquency in Korea.
Therefore, the authors recommended that this measuring instrument can use for assessing personality factors of delinquent-prone adolescents, and hope to make a contribution to screening test and prevention of juvenile delinquency in Korea.
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