Factor structure of psychopathy among methadone maintenance patients

The proposed two-factor structure of the Psychopathy Checklist (Revised) was assessed by confirmatory factor analyses on a sample of 376 community and prison based methadones maintenance patients. Confirmatory factor analyses indicated that the two-factor model proposed by previous researchers did not fit well with the data from this population. Exploratory analyses extracted five interpretable factors, three psychological factors (glibness/manipulative, callousness, irresponsibility), and two behavioral factors (criminal behaviors, promiscuity), which accounted for 61% of the variance. The data provided support for the psychometric reliability of the PCL-R, as indicated by a Chronbach's alpha of 0.83, weighted kappas for concordance between raters ranging from 0.51 to 1.00, and 100% agreement on diagnoses of psychopathy between raters. The data indicate that a two-factor structure does not adequately capture the dimensions of psychopathy in this population. While the factors do fall into distinct psychological and behavioral dimensions, more than two general factors are required to describe the dimensions of psychopathy.