Objective: We have aimed to conduct reliability and validity study of Psychological Screening Test for Adolescents (PSTA). The scale was developed in order to investigate the psychological conditions and urgent psychological needs of juvenile delinquents by screening for most crucial factors.
Method: For this study, interviews were carried out with a sample of 90 male delinquent adolescents in three different juvenile penal institutions in Turkey. For each subject, PSTA and Youth Self Report (YSR) scale were filled out. The interviews were performed by psychologists and social workers in psychological service departments of these institutions.
Results: The statistical investigations have shown that PSTA has an interrater reliability of r=0.89 and a high internal reliability (?=0.79). There is a high level of positive correlation between YSR total score and PSTA total score (r=0.60). Also, based on the scores received from attention deficit and hyperactivity, psychosis and depression-anxiety sub-sections of PSTA, tha sample was divided into high and low score groups for each sub-section. Those groups were compared based on the scores of corresponding sub-sections of YSR. The high score groups of each sub-section of PSTA had significantly higher scores on YSR, showing that the scale has high criterion validity. The factor analysis shows that sub-sections of PSTA were grouped under two factors, which explained 50.35% of the variance.
Discussion: Based on the analyses, it has been found that PSTA is a reliable and valid screening tool, which can be used for investigating psychological conditions and the need for further assessment of juvenile delinquents upon admission to penal institutions.
Conclusions: In penal institutions, where effective and reliable screening devices are needed to be applied in a short amount of time; the short application time and length of PSTA would be an advantage, beside the fact that it is a reliable and valid psychological screening device for adolescents. It is suggested that the scale needs to be applied to a sample including both genders and the general population of adolescents in further studies.
Key words: Adolescents, crime, validity, reliability, screening
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