The revised Psychopathy Checklist: Reliability and factor structure.

Abstract

The revised Psychopathy Checklist (PCL) is a 20-item scale scored from interview and file informa-tion. Analyses of data from 5 prison samples (N = 92 5) and 3 forensic psychiatric samples (N = 356) indicate that the revised PCL resembles its 22-item predecessor in all important respects. It has excellent psychometric properties, and it measures 2 correlated factors that were cross-validated both within and between samples. Correlations between the original PCL and the revised version approached unity for both the factors and the full scale. We conclude that the revised PCL mea-sures the same construct as the original and that the PCL is a reliable and valid instrument for the assessment of psychopathy in male forensic populations. During the last decade, we have devoted considerable effort to the development of an assessment procedure for criminal psychopathy that has acceptable psychometric properties and that is closely tied to traditional clinical conceptions of psy-chopathy. The result is the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL). The original PCL consists of 22 personality and behavioral items, which are completed on the basis of interview and file information (Hare, 1980). There is a considerable amount of published and unpublished evidence attesting to the reliability and validity of the PCL.1 The PCL has been shown to measure two correlated factors (Harpur, Hakstian, & Hare, 1988). There are differences in external correlates of the factors, and we have argued that measurement of both factors is important for a comprehensive assessment of psychopathy (Harpur & Hare,

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