The Performance of Juvenile Delinquents on the Holtzman Inkblot Technique: A Normative Study

Summary

A normative study of the Holtzman Inkblot Technique (H.I.T.) protocols of 75 male juvenile delinquents detained while awaiting Court hearings was undertaken as follows:

	All the protocols were scored by an examiner who was trained in the Klopfer method but who had had no specific training in the scoring of the H.I.T. beyond that afforded by a careful study of the H.I.T. Manual. They were later re-scored by the criterion scorer for the H.I.T. Research Group and the two sets of scores inter-correlated. Highly satisfactory inter-scorer reliability was found for all but two variables.
	The delinquent's scores were compared with those reported by Holtzman, Thorpe, Swartz, & Herron (1961) for non-delinquent adolescent samples. Significant differences were found for 23 of the 40 comparisons made with the delinquents generally having lower scores than would be expected for boys their age. It was concluded that the norms for non-delinquent adolescents arc inappropriate for individual discriminations among delinquents in such a setting and new percentile norms for use in such settings were presented. The possible causes for the observed differences including developmental immaturity, underachievement and guardedness were discussed.
	The delinquents' scores were factor analyzed and rotated by the normalized varimax and graphic hand techniques in an effort to achieve a matching with the factorial structure found by Holtzman et al. (1961) in other samples. More factors were extracted than usually found by Holtzman, probably because of differences in the criterion used by halting factor extraction. The overall factorial structure was found to be in excellent agreement with that found by Holtzman for other samples.