The Relationship Between the Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory and Psychopathology in a U.S. Community Sample of Male Youth

Abstract

The Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory (YPI) is a self-report measure of juvenile psychopathic traits. Validity data for this measure are limited, especially for nonreferred samples. This report investigated the concurrent validity of the YPI by assessing 171 nonreferred male youth (M age = 12.96 years) with a battery of self-, parent-, and peer-report measures including the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), the Reactive-Proactive Aggression Questionnaire (RPQ), the Antisocial Process Screening Device (APSD), and a peer-sociometric measure of aggression. Results confirmed the expected correlations between the YPI and measures of proactive aggression, other externalizing and internalizing behavior, and parent-report psychopathic-like traits. In addition, cluster analyses of YPI scores revealed 2 groups of youth (low vs. high) who scored differently on measures of externalizing behavior. This study supports the utility of the YPI as a research tool for assessing juvenile psychopathic traits.

Acknowledgments

Jared D. Michonski is now at the DBT Center of Seattle, Seattle, Washington.

Notes

To explore the contention that the self-report APSD's face validity makes response bias more likely, the convergence between the self- and parent- report APSD was also examined. As shown in Table 3, all self-report APSD factor scores and self-report APSD Total scores were significantly correlated with parent-report APSD Total scores and with parent-report APSD Narcissism scores(r = .18–.30). All self-report APSD scores with the exception of the APSD Impulsivity factor were also significantly correlated with parent-report APSD Callous/Unemotional score (r = .20–.26). None of the self-report APSD factors or Total score was correlated with parent-report APSD Impulsivity scores. Although a priori hypotheses were not specified, these correlations were somewhat weaker than is typically seen between self- and parent report in community samples (e.g., Verhulst & van der Ende, 1992). This, combined with the pattern of correlations among factors, does not support a strong convergence between self- and parent report APSD scores.

There was better convergence between YPI Interpersonal factor and parent-report APSD Narcissism factor than there was for child- and parent-report APSD Narcissism factor and, with the exception of the Callous/Unemotional scale, generally stronger correlations than were seen between child- and parent-report APSD. Given that the effects of item overlap would tend to favor APSD to APSD correlations, these findings could be seen as supporting the idea that the face validity of the APSD makes it more vulnerable to response bias. However, the higher scores on self- versus parent-report APSD calls into question whether the self-report APSD is particularly susceptible to socially desirable responding, at least within community samples such as this, in which the pressures for socially desirable responding are less than in a forensic context.