Dj. Simourd et Pb. Malcolm, RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY OF THE LEVEL OF SERVICE INVENTORY REVISED AMONG FEDERALLY INCARCERATED SEX OFFENDERS, Journal of interpersonal violence, 13(2), 1998, pp. 261-274
Citations number
39
Categorie Soggetti
Family Studies","Criminology & Penology","Psychology, Applied
Nonsexual criminogenic needs are often overlooked in the assessment an
d treatment of sex offenders because of the focus and emphasis on issu
es surrounding sexual arousal. Augmenting sexual arousal information w
ith objective evaluations of nonsexual criminogenic needs offers a com
prehensive management and treatment strategy for this type of offender
. The Level of Service Inventory-Revised (LSI-R) is an objective risk/
need assessment instrument, which has demonstrated considerable promis
e among juvenile, adult, and female offender groups. Unfortunately, th
ere is no documented research on the LSI-R with sample populations of
sex offenders. In this present study, the LSI-R was completed on a rep
resentative sample of 216 Canadian, federally incarcerated sex offende
rs as parr of an intake assessment. The study sample was composed of 7
4 sexual aggressors of adult victims, 54 extrafamilial child molesters
, and 88 familial child molesters. Consistent with previous research a
mong nonsexual offenders, the LSI-R displayed acceptable psychometric
properties (alpha = .89). Convergent validity was also demonstrated wi
th measures of relevant general criminogenic constructs as well as tho
se specific to sex offenders (i.e., deviant sexual arousal and denial/
minimization). Additionally, comparisons between the three offender gr
oups indicated that familial child molesters scored significantly lowe
r on the LSI-R total score as well as on the Criminal History, Educati
on/Employment, Accommodation, Companions, and Attitude/Orientation sub
components.