Youth Self -Report: Profile patterns of adjudicated adolescents and diagnostic efficiency of clinical scales

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the profile patterns of court-adjudicated males on the Youth Self Report (YSR) Syndrome scales and assess the predictive utility of the DSM-oriented scales in making diagnostic decisions. Participants were 162 adjudicated males, aged 12 to 18 years, that attended or who were attending an alternative school at the time of data collection. YSR data, along with individual and family characteristics, were collected from student files. Participants were separated into one of two groups based on whether the crimes committed were aggressive or nonaggressive in nature (overt versus covert offenders). Results showed no differences between groups on most individual characteristics and family variables. The groups differed in terms of total crimes committed, with violent offenders having committed the greatest number of overall crimes. The diagnostic efficiency of the DSM-oriented scale with respect to its ability to predict the Conduct Disorder diagnosis was lower than the base rate for the diagnosis. Implications of the results, as well as limitations of this study and suggestions for future research are discussed