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Citation |
Seto MC. Psychol. Assess. 2005; 17(2): 156-167. |
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Affiliation |
Law and Mental Health Program, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto, ON, Canada. Michael_Seto@camh.net. |
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Copyright |
(Copyright © 2005, American Psychological Association) |
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DOI |
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PMID |
16029103 |
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Abstract |
The present study was conducted to determine whether combining the results of multiple actuarial risk scales increases accuracy in predicting sex offender recidivism. Multiple methods of combining 4 validated actuarial risk scales--the Violence Risk Appraisal Guide, the Sex Offender Risk Appraisal Guide, the Rapid Risk Assessment for Sexual Offense Recidivism, and the Static-99--were evaluated in a sample of 215 adult male sex offenders. These included the intuitively appealing believe-the-negative and believe-the-positive rules, adapted from medical decision making; the combination of absolute decision thresholds across a range of cutoff scores; and the statistical optimization methods of logistic regression and principal components analyses. No combination method provided a statistically significant or consistent advantage over the predictive accuracy of the single best actuarial scale. |