Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory-Short Version: A Further Test of the Internal Consistency and Criterion Validity

Olivier F Colins,Marc Noom,Wouter Vanderplasschen

doi:10.1007/s10862-012-9299-0

Abstract

The Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory-Short Version (YPI-S; van Baardewijk et al., 2010) is a self-report measure to assess psychopathic-like traits in adolescents. The aim of the present study is to investigate the factor structure, the internal consistency, and the criterion validity of the YPI-S in 768 Belgian community adolescents (45.4 % males). In general, our study supported the YPI three factor structure while relevant indices showed that the instrument is internally consistent. In addition, relations between the YPI-S total score and dimension scores on the one hand and external criterion measures (e.g. conduct problems and self-reported offending) on the other hand were generally in line with predictions. The present study replicated and substantially extended previous findings of the YPI-S in a sample of community youth. Future studies are needed to test whether findings from community samples can be replicated in clinical-referred and justice-involved boys and adolescents.

Highlights

The constellation of interpersonal, affective and behavioral traits referred to as psychopathy has proven to be important to identify serious and violent antisocial adults
When comparing younger to older adolescents, a large effect size was found for conduct problems (.78), with younger adolescents having more conduct problems than their older counterparts (Table 1)
Pearson correlations showed that all three Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory (YPI) dimensions were significantly albeit modestly correlated with each other, while all YPI dimension scores were highly and significantly correlated with the YPI total score (Table 3)

Summary

Introduction

The constellation of interpersonal, affective and behavioral traits referred to as psychopathy has proven to be important to identify serious and violent antisocial adults. Salekin et al 2004), many researchers tried to identify early manifestations of psychopathy in childhood and adolescence. Several instruments have been developed to measure psychopathic-like traits in minors. The Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL:YV; Forth et al 2003) is often considered to be the most reliable and valid measure of psychopathic-like traits among forensic youth (Andershed et al 2007), it is the most expensive and time-consuming. The PCL:YV’s reliance on file-information makes this instrument difficult to use in settings where file data is absent (e.g. community samples). In such settings, researchers most often use alternative screening measures that rely on parents, teachers and/or youths themselves. When compared with instruments relying on parent and teacher ratings, youth self-report instruments are relatively new and less studied

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