A comparative study of juvenile sex offenders, juvenile delinquents, and juvenile dependents using the Rorschach Inkblot Tes

The current study compared the personality profile of three groups of adolescent male offenders on Rorschach responses and demographic variables. Subjects consist of 184 male adolescents: 69 sex offenders, 71 juvenile delinquents, and 44 juvenile dependents. It was hypothesized that the sex offender group possesses unique personality characteristics that can be assessed using the Rorschach.;When the sex offenders' scores were compared informally with Exner's norms, many differences were found. There were no significant differences among the groups in terms of intelligence, age, or race. Results of the ANOVA showed that the sex offender group had significantly higher scores than the other groups for the number of responses (R), texture content (T), aggressive movement (AG), and the sum of blood/clouds/explosion/fire/sex than the other two groups. The sex offenders scored higher than the dependents on the variables Y and the sum of C' + T + V + Y. Also, the sex offenders were also found to have significantly higher scores than the delinquent population on the isolation index and pure H responses; they had significantly lower scores for the variable measuring cooperative movement.;The results of the discriminant analysis revealed that internalized aggression (sum of blood/clouds/fire/explosion/sex), the number of responses, aggressive movement, texture, and diffuse shading contributed the most to the function that discriminated the sex offenders form the other groups. When exploring the heterogeneity of juvenile sex offenders, there were few variables that discriminated between those who offended against children and peers. Results of the t-test suggest significantly higher scores for the child molesters on the S variable. The t-test comparison also suggested that more peer sex offenders were positive for the Hypervigalence Index in comparison to the child offenders. This finding was also true when the level of violence in the crime was controlled.;This study succeeded in discriminating among the juvenile groups and identifying high levels of negative, aggressive characteristics in the sex offender population. Implications and future directions are discussed.