Differentiating Delinquent Youths for Program Planning and Evaluation

Abstract

There is general agreement that delinquent youths are not all alike and, consequently, cannot be expected to respond to a given program in the same way. Program effects may be positive or negative, depending on person-program interactions. The aim of this article is to introduce a method for creating treatment-relevant typologies that can be continually developed and linked to outcomes within the context of an information system. To increase understanding of interactions between programs and client outcomes, a typology of clients was created based on 14 personality scales, using scores obtained at the point of program admission. This article reports on the methods used to construct the typology, the substance of the classification system, and the steps that are being taken to ensure its continued development. It also emphasizes the advantage to typology development of ongoing access to an information system that includes recidivism and other outcome data.