A Validation of the Glueck Social Prediction Scale for Proneness to Delinquency

Abstract

This article is a digest of a thesis presented in the Department of Social Relations of Harvard University for Senior Honors in June, 1952. Mr. Thompson has informed the Editor that there is a copy of the thesis entitled Validating the Glueck Social Table for Predicting Juvenile Delinquency, on file in the Social Relations Library, Harvard University. He has, because of space limitations, been unable to present many tables and more detailed supporting data in this summary presentation. The study is based on cases from the widely discussed Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study which was reported in the book, AN EXPERIMENT IN THE PREVENTION OF DELINQUENCY, by EDWIN POWERS and HELEN WITMER (Columbia University Press, 1951). The writer of the present article carried out this prediction validation study under the direction of Mr. Edwin Powers, who was Visiting Lecturer in Criminology in the Department of Social Relations at Harvard in the academic year 1951-52. Mr. Thompson is now a graduate student at Boston University in the Department of Psychology. He is also engaged in studying another series of boys with a view to checking further the validity of the Glueck Social Prediction Scale as published in UNRAVELING JUVENILE DELINQUENCY (Chapter XX).-EDITOR.