* affection of father for youngster

* affection of mother for youngster

* cohesiveness of the family

Suppose a boy has a father whose discipline is lax, which in the table is defined as "negligent, indifferent, allowing child to do what he likes." Since 59.8 per cent of the juvenile delinquents studied by the Gluecks had fathers whose discipline fitted this description, the boy would be assigned a score of 59.8 on the Social Prediction Table.

To complete the table, the other four factors are totalled. If the score falls between 250 and 299, the likelihood of delinquency is more than even. Scores of over 300 indicate a high likelihood of delinquency.

Testing the Table

In a series of small check-ups on the validity of the table, which has been frequently revised by the Gluecks, it was found that the table properly identified non-delinquents 91.3 per cent of the time compared to approximately 55 per cent accuracy by professional clinicians. Most startling was the fact that out of 350 youngsters checked, nine out of ten "would have been correctly identified at age six as potentially persistent offenders."

There have been two definitive tests of the table, by the Youth Board of New York City and the Maximum Benefits Projects in Washington, D.C. The New York project has been checking the accuracy of the Glueck's charts for 10 years.

It has shown, say the Gluecks, that "the proportion of non-delinquents identified as delinquents is insignificant, and vice versa." The complete data will be published in July.

The results of the Washington test, reported last week, show that 81 per cent of the predicted delinquents had in fact already become delinquents; this study requires three more years of follow-up. On the basis of the two studies, the Gluecks have been able to simplify the original five factors on the cahrt to make it a more practicable instrument for wide use.

Recently, the Gluecks have also learned that their tables, based on Massachusetts delinquents, are meaningful elsewhere. The tables worked just as well in the New York project, which included a high number of non-white population, as they did in the Massachusetts samples, composed mostly of Irish, Italians, Lithuanians and English.

"The fact that this device seems to be working in foreign cultures, in Israel, Japan England, France, shows that there may be casual universals in delinquency," says Mrs. Glueck.

In 1960, the Gluecks had reported that "regardless of ethnic origin, color, religion, intelligence level, residence in urban or rural areas, economic level, or even sex, the predictive cluster is equally potent, not only on American but on Japanese and French samplings."

For the next five years at least, the Gluecks will oversee the setting up of large research projects on delinquency in Tokyo and Rome.

Criminologists