Validating the Factor Structure of the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale in a Community Sample

• Published in: Psychological assessment Vol. 23; no. 3; pp. 670 - 678
• Main Authors: Mahmut, Mehmet K, Menictas, Con, Stevenson, Richard J, Homewood, Judi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Psychological Association 01.09.2011
• Subjects: Adult; Antisocial Personality Disorder - diagnosis; Antisocial Personality Disorder - psychology; Check Lists; Crime; Crime - psychology; Factor Analysis, Statistical; Factor Structure; Female; Humans; Male; Measures (Individuals); Personality Inventory - standards; Psychiatric Status Rating Scales - standards; Psychopathology; Regression (Statistics); Reproducibility of Results; Self Report - standards; Validity
• ISSN: 1040-3590; 1939-134X
• DOI: 10.1037/a0023090

Currently, there is no standard self-report measure of psychopathy in community-dwelling samples that parallels the most commonly used measure of psychopathy in forensic and clinical samples, the Psychopathy Checklist. A promising instrument is the Self-Report Psychopathy scale (SRP), which was derived from the original version the Psychopathy Checklist. The most recent version of the SRP (SRP-III; D. L. Paulhus, C. S. Neumann, & R. D. Hare, in press) has shown good convergent and discriminate validity and a factor structure similar to the current version of the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-R; R. D. Hare, 1991, 2003). The analyses in the current study further investigated the viability of the SRP-III as a PCL-R-analogous measure of psychopathy in nonforensic and nonclinical samples by extending the validation process to a community sample. Using confirmatory factor analyses and logistic regressions, the results revealed that a four-factor oblique model for the SRP-III was most tenable, congruent with the PCL-R factor structure of psychopathy and previous research in which the SRP-III was administered to a student sample. (Contains 1 figure and 5 tables.)