InstructionsFor this task, imagine that you were asked to give a scale construction proposal to a group of hypothetical PhD students. The PowerPoint presentation should include the definition
I am creating a psychological construct for serial killers. This is a survey that is titled “Serial Killer’s View of Personal Rehabilitation”.
Definition: A serial killer’s view of personal rehabilitation is a survey where a convicted serial killer assesses their feelings on how they are currently doing while incarcerated.
Justification: The responses are made to get the killer to think about their own care and their views; how they think their rehabilitation is going.
Construction: Questions will be about the killer’s point of view and will give a varying degree to those responses from strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, and strongly agree.
Responses: The range of responses will give staff the ability to see where the killer thinks they need more help to where they think they are doing good, currently.
Reliability: Test-retest reliability will be employed to compare results over a period of time to see if the test results are useful.
Validity: Responses will be compared to the findings of the therapist on staff as well as the Prisoner Recidivism Analysis Tool.
Tests like this: There are no surveys currently available like this one. There is a large potential for the killer to lie and that could very well be a mental disorder that is allowing them to lie so easily as well. That is not the point of the survey though, it is made for them to think about themselves rather than simply about the crimes in which they have been accused and found guilty of. It is a way to help them get more out of their stay rather than simply withering away in a cell.
References
Federal Bureau of Investigations. (2018). Characteristics of a killer- FBI. Retrieved from
https://www.fbi.gov/audio-repository/characteristics-of-a-killer/view
Federal Bureau of Investigations. (2018). Serial killers, part 8: New research aims to
help investigators solve serial murder cases. Retrieved from https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/serial-killers-part-8-new-research-aims-to-help-investigators-solve-serial-murder-cases
Office of Justice Programs. (2018). Bureau of justice statistics- Prisoner recidivism
analysis tool. Retrieved from https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=2392
Office of Justice Programs. (2018). Bureau of justice statistics- Recividism. Retrieved
from https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=17
U.S. Department of Justice. (2014). The nation's two measures of homicide. Retrieved
from https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ntmh.pdf
Thoughts about the construct: I want my construct to be a self-report survey for serial killers. There is no way that these individuals are going to be released but the idea is to see where there personal sense of self is. Do they think they have been rehabilitated or that their potential medication regimen is actually helping them? After the person has completed the survey I would then like to compare those results with what the prisoner therapist has to say about it. Will the serial killer lie to the therapist? Will they lie on the survey? Will they possibly lie on both? With these findings I could then use the prisoner recidivism analysis tool and see what those results will tell me and compile a final report with all three opinions being used. It essentially leaves me unbiased as I am looking at the information that is provided and not actually interacting with the prisoner and having no true intimate background information on the person.
I feel like this is a lot to grip for others but to me it makes perfect sense. There will of course be ethics and prisoner rights and accessibility issues that would potentially be addressed. The likelihood of actually being able to use my self-reporting test is very low but I like the idea of it. It has potential to add to the understanding of a killer.
