Date of Award:
5-1976
Document Type:
Dissertation
Degree Name:
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department:
Psychology
Committee Chair(s)
Keith Checketts
Committee
Keith Checketts
Committee
Michael Bertoch
Committee
Elwin Nielsen
Committee
David Stone
Committee
Marvin Fiefield
Abstract
A method generated by psychophysics has been used to develop a Checklist consisting of 58 life-events that require varying degrees of readjustment on the part of adolescents experiencing them.
A very high degree of concordance was found to exist among psychologists, social workers and probation officers with regard to the relative value of life-change required by those events.
Information about the occurrence of the amount of life-change was subsequently gathered from a sample of 334 juvenile delinquents and 104 nondelinquents by administering the Checklist. A measure of the degree of severity of delinquency was also obtained for each delinquent subject.
The magnitude of life-change experienced by the delinquent sample was found to be highly significantly related to the severity of delinquency and to types of delinquency. The greater the magnitude of life-change, the greater the severity of delinquency, and the more severe the type of delinquency, the greater the amount of experienced life-change.
Partially specific relationships were also found with regard to life-events and categories of events. Forty-six of the 58 life-events were found to have discriminatory value for at least one of the four major types of delinquency. Additionally, status-offenders were found to be more similar to nondelinquents than to delinquents with respect to the kinds of life-events which affect them.
Other types of delinquents were not significantly differentiated by categories of life-events.
Checksum
26851b7c8a0ec41f27e3cd00e69996d7
Recommended Citation
Kulcsar, Paul G., "The Development and Validation of a Life-Change Checklist for Juvenile Delinquents" (1976). All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023. 5853.
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd/5853
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