Further investigation of findings reported for the Minnesota sex offender screening tool-revised.
Among a number of widely used risk assessment instruments with adult sexual offenders, the Minnesota Sex Offender Screening Tool-Revised (MnSOST-R) has been subject to relatively few evaluation studies. Only two independent research groups have published replication studies in the peer-reviewed literature with data not provided by the MnSOST-R's developers, and the results regarding the accuracy of predicting sexual recidivism have been mixed. In this article, important differences between the Barbaree et al. and Langton et al. studies are presented. Analyses reported for the various subsets comprising these two samples indicate that coding discrepancies in the Barbaree et al. study account for the different findings, with a moderate level of predictive accuracy using the Receiver Operating Characteristic curve ultimately found for the MnSOST-R in both data sets.
Langton
Calvin M
CM
University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.
Barbaree
Howard E
HE
Harkins
Leigh
L
Peacock
Edward J
EJ
Arenovich
Tamara
T
D005555:Forensic Psychiatry / Q000379:methods; D006801:Humans; D010552:Personality Assessment / Q000592:standards*; D010556:Personality Tests; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012107:Research Design; D018570:Risk Assessment / Q000379:methods; D055502:Secondary Prevention; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D012742:Sex Offenses / Q000145:classification*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires