Adolescent offenders and stages of change.

Two hundred twenty-five adolescent offenders completed the Stages of Change Scales (SOCS; E. A. McConnaughy, J. O. Prochaska, & W. F. Velicer, 1983), which were designed to measure 4 stages of psychological and behavioral change. The goals of this research were to obtain norms among adolescent offenders for the SOCS, to examine the factor structure of the SOCS, and to investigate the convergent and discriminant validity of the SOCS by examining associations among these scales and the Paulhus Deception Scales (PDS; D. L. Paulhus, 1994, 1999) and Multidimensional Anger Inventory (MAI; J. M. Siegel, 1986). Means and alpha coefficients for the SOCS were similar to those reported in a previous normative clinical sample of adult patients. However, relatively large intercorrelations among the 4 scales of the SOCS, and results from factor analyses of SOCS items, suggested that fewer than 4 factors represented the SOCS items among our sample of adolescent offenders. Patterns of correlations with the PDS and with the MAI provided convergent and discriminant validity for the SOCS. Implications of the findings for research and clinical practice are discussed.

Effectiveness of treatment for dissociative identity disorder.

In a recent study by Ellason and Ross, patients with Dissociative Identity Disorder reported a decrease in symptoms on the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-II over a 2-yr. follow-up period. Patients judged to have achieved integration of their personalities rated themselves as more substantially improved on the Millon-II than did patients judged not to have achieved integration. Ellason and Ross suggested that this improvement reflected the influence of treatment; however, for several reasons, their findings are open to alternative interpretations. First, in the absence of proper control conditions, one cannot rule out the contribution of other factors to the over-all improvement of patients such as regression of symptoms toward the mean following the initial assessment. Second, patients self-reported improvement was less substantial when data were reanalyzed using more appropriate statistical criteria. Third, the greater improvement observed among integrated patients relative to nonintegrated patients may reflect influences other than differential responsiveness to treatment, such as less severe pathology prior to treatment. More systematic research is needed to clarify the effect of treatment on Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Immediate antecedents to adolescents' offenses.

The current research examined importance ratings by adolescent offenders of immediate antecedents to their offenses. One hundred and fifteen adolescent offenders consecutively admitted to an inpatient psychiatric unit for court-ordered assessment completed the High Risk Situations Questionnaire for Young Offenders (HRSQ-YO), an instrument designed to assess the self-reported importance of various antecedents to a past, highly salient, offense. Principal components analysis of responses to the 71 items of the HRSQ-YO resulted in three factors which were rotated to a varimax criterion and labelled Negative Affectivity, Delinquency, and Aggressivity. Delinquency factor scores were significantly higher for property offenses than for violent offenses, whereas Aggressivity factor scores were significantly higher for violent offenses than for property offenses. Negative Affectivity factor scores did not differ between property and violent offenses. Implications of the results for relapse prevention approaches to the reduction of recidivism among adolescent offenders are discussed.

Heat of combustion of cells of Pseudomonas fluorescens.

Based upon 161 determinations, the heat of combustion of cells of Pseudomonas fluorescens averaged 5.32 kcal/g on an ash-free dry-weight basis. The standard deviation was 0.39 kcal.