Deficiency and Delinquency: An Interpretation of Mental TestingMiner, James Burt
Science
Deficiency and Delinquency: An Interpretation of Mental Testing
Miner, James Burt
Children with mental disabilities; Juvenile delinquents; Mentally ill offenders; Psychological tests
Using the same four-fold method we may calculate the correlation between
deficiency and juvenile delinquency among Minneapolis boys. It is
necessary to make a good estimate of the proportion of boys who annually
become delinquent in Minneapolis for the first time, and of the
proportion of these boys who are correspondingly deficient. Fortunately
these comparisons can be made fairly accurately on the basis of the
reports for the year 1915 and of our tests of juvenile delinquents. We
may use a minimum and a maximum estimate of deficiency among the
delinquents corresponding to those that tested below borderlines which
represented the lowest 0.5% and the lowest 1.5% of the population of
corresponding ages. We need to assume that the frequency of tested
deficiency among the boys found delinquent would correspond within these
limits to the frequency among the Glen Lake group. The indices for the
amount of school retardation in these two groups (Table XIV) indicate
that this is a liberal estimate. We must also assume that the proportion
of juvenile delinquents for the year 1915 may be regarded as typical for
a series of years. The number of new cases of boys in juvenile court in
1915 was within 18 of the median number for the last four years. The
result of these estimates is Table XIX for the minimum estimate of
deficiency. A similar table for the maximum estimate of deficiency would
be the same, except that the proportion of all boys of these ages who
were deficient would be 1.5%, and of the delinquent group, 7.3%.
The computation of the correlations by Pearson's tetrachoric _r_ shows
the relationship between juvenile delinquency and deficiency among boys
to be .16, P. E. .07, on the minimum estimate of deficiency. On the
maximum estimate the correlation is .29, P. E. .05. In order to make a
closer comparison between Goring's calculation and my own I have
recalculated the correlation for his group on the assumption that 0.5%
of the general male population were deficient and that 1.29% would be
convicted felons of the type among which he found 10% to be deficient.
This brings the minimum correlation for his figures to .59, P. E. .03.
TABLE XIX
FOUR-FOLD CORRELATION TABLE FOR JUVENILE DELINQUENCY AND DEFICIENCY IN
MINNEAPOLIS (MINIMUM ESTIMATE).
BOYS 8-16 YEARS OF AGE
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