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.