Predictive validity despite social desirability: evidence for the robustness of self-report among offenders.
BACKGROUND
Many professionals believe that self-report questionnaires used to predict recidivism have a low validity. The aim of the present study was to investigate the assumption that the validity of self-report is vulnerable to self-presentation biases in offender samples.


METHODS
The participants consisted of 124 male offenders who volunteered to complete the Self-Appraisal Questionnaire (SAQ).


RESULTS
Lower scores on measures of social desirability were significantly associated with higher levels of risk (as measured by self-report and a rated actuarial instrument) and a higher likelihood to re-offend. Further, stepwise regression analysis revealed that social desirability added significantly unique variance in the prediction of violent recidivism.


CONCLUSIONS
The authors propose that impression management may be an enduring person-based characteristic within an offender sample rather than a situationally determined response style. The variance associated with this characterological information is proposed to be the source of the unique predictive variance.
Mills
Jeremy F
JF
Psychology Department, Bath Institution, Ontario, Canada. MillsJF@csc-scc...gc.ca
Loza
Wagdy
W
Kroner
Dary G
DG
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003415:Crime / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D011594:Psychometrics; D012008:Recurrence; D012044:Regression Analysis; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D018570:Risk Assessment; D012647:Self-Assessment; D012919:Social Behavior