ABSTRACT
The current article addresses the psychometric qualities of the German Version of Gudjonsson's Blame Attribution Inventory (GBAI), a self-report scale for measuring attribution of blame for crime. The GBAI was administered to a criminal sample of forensic and criminal inmates (n=107). Findings indicate that the German version of the Gudjonsson Blame Attribution Inventory possesses acceptable test-retest stability and good internal consistency. Factor analysis reproduced the three basic dimensions of the GBAI: external attribution, mental-element attribution, and guilt-feeling attribution. Forensic patients had higher mental-element attribution and guilt-feeling attribution scores than the prison inmates. Interestingly, sexual offenders who were prisoners, showed the lowest guilt-feeling attribution, while sexual offenders who were forensic patients had the highest guilt-feeling attribution scores. Since earlier research reported a tendency of faking good in sexual offenders, we suggest that the forensic sexual offenders may demonstrate a social desirable response tendency in an attempt to gain sympathy and/or earlier parole. All in all, our data show that the German version of the GBAI is a valuable tool for measuring attributional styles of offenders.
Subject(s)
Forensic Psychiatry/instrumentation , Guilt , Psychological Tests , Social Responsibility , Adult , Germany , Humans , Male , Principal Component Analysis , Prisoners/psychology , Prisoners/statistics & numerical data , Psychometrics/methods , Rape/psychology , Reproducibility of Results , Violence/psychologyABSTRACT
The current article addresses the psychometric qualities of the German version of the Structured Inventory of Malingered Symptomatology (SIMS), a self-report measure of malingering. The SIMS was administered to a heterogeneous sample of forensic patients (n=62) and undergraduate students (n=204). Within the student sample, some undergraduates were instructed to feign certain pathological conditions, while others were asked to respond honestly to the SIMS items. The findings indicate that the German version of the SIMS demonstrates adequate test-retest stability and internal consistency. In the patient sample, the SIMS was found to correlate strongly with manipulative and antisocial personality features. More specifically, SIMS scores were higher in sexually delinquent patients with antisocial personality disorders. Our findings support the SIMS as a valuable screening tool for malingering of psychiatric symptoms.
Subject(s)
Malingering/diagnosis , Malingering/psychology , Personality Inventory/standards , Psychiatric Status Rating Scales/standards , Psychological Tests/standards , Severity of Illness Index , Sex Offenses/psychology , Adult , Female , Germany , Humans , Male , Malingering/classification , Predictive Value of Tests , Reproducibility of Results , Sensitivity and SpecificityABSTRACT
Supernormality refers to the tendency to systematically deny the presence of common symptoms (e.g., intrusive thoughts). The current article describes the psychometric qualities of a 37-item self-report measure of supernormality (i.e., Supernormality Scale; SS). The SS was administered to nonclinical individuals (n=95), noncriminal psychiatric patients (n=28), nonpsychiatric delinquents (n=49), and a heterogeneous sample of forensic patients (n=59). Within the healthy control sample, some employees were instructed to feign supernormal behaviour, while others were asked to respond honestly to SS items. Findings indicate that the SS demonstrates adequate test-retest stability and internal consistency. In the forensic patient sample, elevated SS scores were significant related to denial of intrusive thoughts in a thought suppression paradigm. However, accuracy parameters for the SS (i.e., sensitivity and specificity) showed that there is room for improvement. Nevertheless, our findings indicate that the SS might be a useful research tool for measuring denial of common symptoms.
