Differences between Felons and Students on the Minnesota Counseling Inventory

The investigation of differences between criminals and non-criminals may be useful in the pursuit of knowledge about criminality and the determinants of deviant behavior. To find personality factors which reliably discriminate non-offenders from convicted felons, the Minnesota Counseling Inventory (Berdie & Layron, 1957) was administered to 40 incarcerated male felons and 60 male undergraduate smdents. As the inventory is designed for use in Grades 9 through 12, the language is easily understandable, and suited for use with a prison population. The college students were tested during regular classes; the felons completed the questionnaire while attending high school level classes conducted at the California Conservation Center, Jamestown, California. Multiple discriminant analysis (Veldman, 1967) was used to compare the profiles of the two groups. Factors affording maximum discrimination between groups are identified by this technique, and the significance of the over-all discrimination is tested. In this manner differences between groups or between individual scales can be determined. Table 1 shows mean raw scores for each group and discriminant function weights for each dimension of the test

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