Weak data, strong conclusions: Some comments on Howard, Bailey and Newman's use of the psychopathy checklist

In a recent paper Howard, Bailey and Newman described their experiences with a 15-item version of Hare's research scale for the assessment of psychopathy. They administered the checklist and several MMPI-derived scales to 50 consecutive admissions to Broadmoor Hospital. Psychiatric diagnoses we...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Personality and individual differences 1986, Vol.7 (2), p.147-151
Main Authors: Hare, Robert D., Harpur, Timothy J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biological and medical sciences
Medical sciences
Nosology. Terminology. Diagnostic criteria
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychopathology. Psychiatry
Techniques and methods
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Summary:In a recent paper Howard, Bailey and Newman described their experiences with a 15-item version of Hare's research scale for the assessment of psychopathy. They administered the checklist and several MMPI-derived scales to 50 consecutive admissions to Broadmoor Hospital. Psychiatric diagnoses were used to assign the patients to one of four clinical groups: Schizophrenic, Personality Disorder, Mixed and Affective Disorder. They reported that the Psychopathy Checklist was far better than the MMPI variables in discriminating among groups, but that it lacked clinical specificity because half of the schizophrenics were misclassified as ‘psychopaths’. However, we argue that serious methodological problems, including the use of poorly defined and inadequate criterion groups, make it impossible to draw any useful conclusions from the study.
ISSN:0191-8869
1873-3549
DOI:10.1016/0191-8869(86)90049-8