Evaluator Disagreement about the Association between Psychopathy Checklist-Revised Scores and Risk for Future Sexual...

Area of Science:

• Forensic Psychology
• Clinical Psychology
• Legal Psychology

Background:

• Forensic evaluators commonly use assessment instruments for risk evaluations.
• Sexually Violent Predator (SVP) evaluations rely on these instruments to determine recidivism risk.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether different forensic evaluators utilize results from risk assessment instruments consistently.
• To examine variations in how evaluators associate instrument scores with conclusions about sexual recidivism risk in SVP evaluations.

Main Methods:

• The study analyzed data from 338 Sexually Violent Predator evaluations.
• Three experienced evaluators, each with over 60 SVP evaluations using the Static-99R and Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), provided data.
• Multiple regression analyses were employed to assess the association between instrument scores and risk opinions.

Main Results:

• Significant differences were observed in how evaluators associated instrument scores with their risk opinions.
• One evaluator's risk opinions were primarily predicted by PCL-R Facet 2 (Affective) and Facet 3 (Lifestyle) scores, not the Static-99R.
• Another evaluator's risk opinions were independently predicted only by Static-99R scores, while the third used both Static-99R and PCL-R Facet 2 scores.

Conclusions:

• Forensic evaluation outcomes, specifically risk assessments for sexual recidivism, can be significantly influenced by the individual evaluator.
• The findings highlight the need for greater standardization or understanding of interpretive variability in forensic risk assessment.
• This variability suggests that evaluator-specific practices play a non-trivial role in the conclusions drawn from standardized assessment instruments.