Cross-Validation of the German Version of the Revised Screening Scale for Pedophilic Interests (SSPI-2)

Pedophilic interests are considered as one of the most important diagnostic aspects and one of the strongest predictors of sexual recidivism among persons convicted of sexual offenses against children. The Revised Screening Scale for Pedophilic Interests (SSPI-2) is a comparatively easy-to-score diagnostic actuarial instrument to assess pedohebephilic interests. The present study aimed to examine the convergent, predictive, and incremental validity of the German version of the SSPI-2 in a sample of N = 438 males released from the Austrian prison system who had been convicted and incarcerated because of sexual offenses against children. As expected, the SSPI-2 was moderately correlated with a diagnosis of (exclusive) pedophilia and with the risk assessment instruments Static-99 and Sexual Violence Risk-20 (SVR-20) v2. The examination of the predictive validity revealed moderate effect sizes of the SSPI-2 for the prediction of sexually motivated recidivism. Sequential Cox regressions showed that the SSPI-2 incrementally predicts sexual recidivism and sexual noncontact recidivism beyond the SVR-20 v2 and the diagnosis of exclusive pedophilia; however, the SSPI-2 did not have incremental predictive validity beyond the Static-99. Finally, normative data were constructed for the observed and calculated proportions of pedophilia and exclusive pedophilia diagnoses and for 5-year sexual recidivism rates.