Reliabilities and interrelationships of two HABGT scales in a male delinquent population

Reliabilities and interrelationships of the Adiense-Abience and the Psychopathology Scales of the HABGT were investigated in a population of 120 13-15 year-old male delinquents over a 40-week period. The delinquent boys were assigned to three conditions: individual tutoring and counseling; group tutoring and counseling; controls (no treatment). Both scales were found to have high test-retest reliability over all conditions (rs ranged from .85 to .93). Interscorer reliability among three scorers was also found to be very high. As expected, treatment had a differential effect on psychopathology and on adience-abience: the former was modifiable while the latter was resistant to change. Also as predicted, the two scales had a significantly higher degree of commonality before treatment intervention than after such intervention, but the relationship remained stable for the control group. Implications for clinical and research use are discussed.