Date of Award

12-2020

Document Type

Doctoral Research Project

Degree Name

Doctor of Psychology (PsyD)

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Radhika Krishnamurthy

Second Advisor

Gordon Patterson

Third Advisor

Julie Costopoulos

Fourth Advisor

Lisa Steelman

Abstract

The current study aimed to expand the existing literature on sex offenders with regards to personality and psychological dysfunction, by comparing specific subgroups of sex offenders using the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory- Second Edition- Restructured Form (MMPI-2-RF). Archival data from a sample of N = 244 adult male sex offenders was grouped based on four characteristic variables: offense type (contact vs. noncontact), relationship to the victim (familial vs. nonfamilial), victim age (younger vs. older), and the presence or absence of a personality disorder diagnosis or features. MANOVA and ANOVA results demonstrated that contact offenders scored significantly higher than noncontact offenders on scales THD and BXD, but not on RC4, RC8, JCP, and DISC-r. Findings pertaining to intrafamilial and extrafamilial offenders were largely contrary to the hypotheses with regards to RC4, RC8, RC2, and RC7. Mean scores produced by sex offenders with younger- vs. older-aged victims significantly differed on 10 of the 17 hypothesized scales: EID, BXD, RCd, RC3, RC4, RC7, RC8, RC9, DISC-r, and NEGE-r; offenders with older-aged victims scored higher than those with younger-aged victims. Sex offenders with personality disorder diagnoses or features scored significantly higher than those without on 10 of the 40 scales included in the analyses: RC4, RC6, BXD, DISC-r, HLP, ANP, JCP, AGG, FML, and DSF. Additionally, this study included independent data collection of a community comparison sample that was compared to a subgroup of this overall sample of sex offenders determined previously to have within-normal-limits test profiles (VanSlyke, 2018). Findings demonstrated that this subgroup of sex offenders scored significantly higher on 31 of the 40 hypothesized scales. Implications, limitations, and future directions of these findings were discussed

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