Understanding Scale Figures

The scale figures have three components:

Component 1 scores of community comparison sample. The grey rectangle represents the range of scores of the comparison sample on the specific scale. For most scales the group is a sample of adult males in the community.  In a few scales the comparison group is a university sample.

The numbers across the top of the rectangle are T scores. These are standardized scores in which the mean is 50 and the standard deviation is 10.  In our examples we convert the T score to percentiles by the following algorithm:

T score	Percentile of People Scoring Below that T score
25	1
30	2
35	7
40	16
45	31
50	50
55	69
60	84
65	93
70	98
75	99

Component 2 box and whiskers plots of scores of a sample of adults or juveniles who sexually offended.  The adults were in prison; the juveniles were in residential treatment centers.  

These are based on percentiles. The specific numbers are:

Component 3: The respondent’s score is represented by a red circle (or half circle if the score is lower than T = 25 or higher than T = 75. In addition, the respondent’s T score and percentile are denoted to the left of the grey rectangle.  The T score represents where the respondent falls with respect to the community sample and the percentile, where he or she falls with respect to the appropriate sample of individuals who had sexually offended (either adult or juvenile). 

Here is an example of the resulting figure: