Identifying adolescent runaways: the predictive utility of the personality inventory for children

This study investigated whether runaway behavior could be related to six problematic areas. Selected scales of the Personality Inventory for Children, representative of the six areas, were hypothesized to discriminate between an adolescent runaway group and a control group. Four scales correctly classified 95.1% of the runaway subjects and 100% of the control subjects with a total correct classification rate of 97.52%. It was further hypothesized that the runaway group was not significantly different from a known clinical group with moderate to severe psychopathology. Results indicated that the runaway group was not significantly different except on one scale, Delinquency (DLQ). On the DLQ scale the runaway group had a significantly higher mean score than the clinical group. Application and recommendations are presented.