NCJ Number
229346
Journal
Legal and Criminological Psychology Volume: 14 Issue: 2 Dated: September 2009 Pages: 227-240
Date Published
September 2009
Length
14 pages
Annotation
Based on recent research into adolescent emotional behavior that has confirmed a three-factor structure for emotional style in samples of children and adolescents (Clarbour and Roger, 2004), the current British study replicated this factor structure for the Emotional Behavior Scale (EBS) among young offenders and examined the role of the factors in offender behavior.
Abstract
The study found that the three emotional-style factors obtained for school children - social anxiety, malevolent aggression, and social self-esteem - were confirmed for the young offender sample. Lower scores on malevolent aggression and higher scores on social anxiety and social self-esteem were significantly associated with a later first contact with police. High malevolent aggression and lower social anxiety were significantly associated with placement on Governor's reports while in prison (serious misconduct while an inmate); and high malevolent aggression was associated with various violent offenses. The study also found that the three scales related systematically and predictably to a range of other personality and emotional-style scales. In the first of the 2 studies reported, a factor analysis was conducted for 307 male inmates from 4 British prisons. A factor analysis was also conducted for 294 male school children between ages 13 and 16. The samples were administered the EBS, a 65-item measure of adolescent emotional behavior related to the three factors of social anxiety, malevolent aggression, and social self-esteem. The second study involved the predictive validation of the EBS among 255 inmates from 1 of the aforementioned prisons, and 9 inmates from another of the prisons. 4 tables and 36 references