Date of Award

11-2018

Document Type

Doctoral Research Project

Degree Name

Doctor of Psychology (PsyD)

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Radhika Krishnamurthy

Second Advisor

Heidi Hatfield Edwards

Third Advisor

Vanessa Edkins

Fourth Advisor

Lisa Steelman

Abstract

Personality assessment of sex offenders provides clarifying information regarding underlying characteristics that may contribute to commission of sex offenses. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and its second edition, the MMPI-2, have been the most extensively used personality measures in the psychological assessment of sex offenders. The latest version of the test, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, Second Edition, Restructured Form (MMPI-2-RF) is the focus of the current study. The current study evaluated MMPI-2-RF profiles obtained from a sample of 281 adult male sex offenders. The mean age of the sample was 36.3 (SD = 13.1; range = 18 – 75). A cluster analytic approach was taken to identify subgroups of sex offenders, similar to research directions taken with the MMPI and MMPI-2. Results of an agglomerative hierarchical cluster analysis and subsequent K-means analysis yielded three distinct clusters. Discriminant function analyses indicated two significant functions that correctly classified 96.4% of cases into these clusters. Multivariate and univariate analyses of variance indicated significant differences in mean scores across the three clusters for 33 of the 49 scales examined. A review of cluster patterns indicated significantly higher scores in Cluster 1 (n = 46) than Cluster 2 (n = 93) and Cluster 3 (n = 142), and significantly higher scores in Cluster 2 than Cluster 3. Thus, the clusters appeared to represent high psychological disturbance, within normal limits, and low disturbance presentations, respectively. Cluster characteristics and implications of these findings are discussed.

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