Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version and Youth Psychopathic trait Inventory: A comparison study

There have been a number of developments in the assessment of juvenile psychopathy using self-report and interview based measures, but few studies have looked at their validity outside the respective development sites. We examined the convergent and predictive validity of the Youth Psychopathy traits Inventory (YPI) and the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL: YV) in 115 male adolescents with DSM-IV conduct disorder. The measures assess moderately overlapping constructs in the lifestyle/social deviance domain but do not correlate on the affective domain. Both measures showed predictive accuracy for subsequent institutional infractions and violence with the lifestyle/antisocial elements showing most promise, however the PCL: YV showed better predictive accuracy. The YPI may be useful as an adjunctive dimensional assessment of the psychopathy construct but does not map onto the affective components of the PCL: YV. This limits the use of the YPI as an alternative mode of assessing psychopathy in forensic samples.