Citation

Kerka JE, Heckman DJ, Albert JH, Sprague JE, Maddox LO. J. Forensic Sci. 2018; 63(4): 1122-1133.

Affiliation

Ohio Attorney General's Bureau of Criminal Investigation, Richfield, OH, 44286.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, American Society for Testing and Materials, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/1556-4029.13697

PMID

29193079

Abstract

The Ohio Attorney General's Sexual Assault Kit (SAK) Testing Initiative has resulted in nearly 14,000 kits being processed since the initiation of the project in 2012. A logistic regression model was fit to the data from 2500 SAKs in order to determine the probability of obtaining at least one Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) eligible DNA profile based on a number of predictor variables. The probability of obtaining at least one CODIS eligible DNA profile from an SAK varied as a function of (i) days to kit collection following a sexual assault; (ii) years to kit submission to the laboratory for testing following kit collection; (iii) the age of the victim; and (iv) the occurrence of victim-reported consensual sex around the time of the assault and/or kit collection. These findings demonstrate the utility of the statistical modeling of data obtained from the "forklift" testing approach of sexual assault kits.

© 2017 American Academy of Forensic Sciences.

Language: en

Keywords

CODIS; forensic science; logistic regression; sexual assault kit processing; statistical modeling