Stephanie R. Penney 1 Rosalind E.H. Catchpole 1 Marlene M. Moretti 1 Patrick Bartel 2

1. The Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth :A Step Towards Construct Validation in a Sample of High-Risk Youths Stephanie R. Penney1 Rosalind E.H. Catchpole1 Marlene M. Moretti1 Patrick Bartel2 1Simon Fraser University 2Youth Forensic Psychiatric Services Burnaby, British Columbia

2. Acknowledgments This research is funded by the CIHR Institute of Gender and Health (IGH) in partnership with the CIHR Institute of Human Development, Child and Youth Health (IHDCYH) through a New Emerging Team grant awarded to Dr. Marlene M. Moretti (CIHR #54020)

3. Youth Violence Today • US: 50% increase in juvenile arrests for violent crimes between 1988 and 1994 • Canada: 77% increase in juvenile charges for violent crimes between 1988 and 1998 • Youth violence remains a significant social concern in both Canada and the US, despite declining rates of youth violence over the past 5-10 years

4. Societal & Financial Costs of Youth Violence • Societal and financial costs from failing to intervene with high-risk young offenders are substantial • The identification of risk for violence and criminality in young persons is an important endeavor • Public safety, protection, & intervention • Efficient allocation of resources

5. The Changing Face of Youth Violence: Aggressive Girls • Rate of violent offending among girls has increased over the past five years, while that for boys has been dropping since the mid 1990’s • Despite these increases, very little is known empirically about the factors that may work to cause and maintain aggression in young females

6. Risk for Future Violence: Adults • Two main approaches to risk assessment • Actuarial methods • Structured clinical assessment • Major obstacles • How to gage risk that changes over time; long-range predictions • Violence is a low base rate behavior; false-positive errors will arise

7. Risk for Future Violence: Juveniles • Juveniles are often described as “moving targets” whose characteristics are too unstable to gage in the context of a single risk evaluation (Grisso, 1998) • This presents a unique challenge when predicting behaviour among adolescents above that posed by adults • Adolescent risk assessment instruments have been criticized on the basis that they are not sufficiently sensitive to dynamic factors (Borum, 2000)

8. The SAVRY (Borum, Bartel, & Forth, 2002) • Predicts and helps manage risk for violence in adolescent boys and girls (aged 12-18) • A 30-item guide that includes historical, social/ contextual, and clinical risk factors as well as protective factors • Follows the “Structured Clinical Approach” to risk assessment • Generates a clinical risk rating based on review of items and clinical judgment

9. Previous Empirical Support for the SAVRY • Research attesting to the measure’s validity and reliability is preliminary • Catchpole & Gretton (2003) • Predictive of violent offending over 1 year • Bartel, Borum, & Forth (in press) • Total and subscale scores associated with institutional aggression and aggressive CD symptoms (rs = .23 to .52) • Incremental validity beyond the PCL-YV and the YLS/CMI • Gretton & Abramowitz (2002) • Historical and clinical scales strongest predictors of violence within a 12-month follow-up period • 70% of violent recidivists classified as high risk

10. Previous Empirical Support for the SAVRY • Very few studies have addressed whether the SAVRY operates comparably for boys and girls • Fitch (2002) • Correlations between the SAVRY subscales and violence ranged from .48 to .56 and were higher on average for female youth • Bartel & Regan (2003) • SAVRY risk domains and factors appeared to be operating similarly across gender, but some differences did emerge

11. Current Study The present study sought to address two issues: 1) To examine the reliability and concurrent validity of the SAVRY in a sample of high-risk youths 2) To investigate whether the relationships between the SAVRY and indices of aggression varied by gender

12. Participants & Procedure • Participants • 94 adolescents (41 males, 53 females) • Aged 12 and 18 (M = 15.42, SD = 1.47) • Sites • Custody centres (54%) • Provincial assessment centre (44%) • Probation offices and assessment centres (2%) • Ethnicity • Caucasian (64%) • Aboriginal (23%) • Mixed Caucasian and Aboriginal (4%) • Other (7%) • The SAVRY was scored based on a 90-minute semi-structured interview and a review of file information. Participants also filled out a series of self-report questionnaires

13. Outcome Measures • Self-Report of Offending, Revised (SRO-R) • Based on the Self-Report of Delinquency (Elliott & Ageton, 1980) • 15 items assessing the occurrence and frequency of non-violent and violent offending • Two measures used in the current study: # of violent offences and # of non-violent offences • Little’s Aggression Items (LAI-25; Little et al., 2003) • 25 items form two overarching composite scores: “Overt” and “Relational” aggression • Evidence for good internal, external, and criterion validity

14. Rater & Measurement Reliability • Intraclass correlations (ICC2, n = 15) were as follows: • Historical: .99 • Social/Contextual: .85 • Individual/Clinical: .97 • General clinical risk rating: .90 • ICCs were similar for boys and girls • Alpha coefficients ranged from .86 (Social/Contextual) to .99 (Historical)

15. Descriptive Information **Males > Females,p < .01 (2-tailed).

16. Males Low: 11.6% Med: 51.2% Hi: 37.2 Females Low: 20.0% Med: 49.1% Hi: 30.9% SAVRY Clinical Risk Rating

17. SAVRY: Aggression and antisocial behavior Variable B SE B  Step 1 Gender Overt aggression -1.21 1.58 -.07 Relational aggression2.88 1.38 .21* # Violent3.54 1.63 .75* # Non-violent -.34 .42 -.08 SAVRY Overt aggression4.75 1.16 .39** Relational aggression2.11 1.02 .21* # Violent4.19 1.20 1.19** # Non-violent.81 .31 .27** Step 2 Gender X SAVRY Overt aggression -.83 2.38 -.15 Relational aggression 2.21 2.07 .49 # Violent-1.82 .71 -1.17** # Non-violent -.62 .65 - .47 ** p < .01. * p < .05

18. SAVRY subscales: Aggression and antisocial behavior • Historical and individual/clinical scales were predictive of all outcome variables • Social/contextual scale predicted higher levels of overt aggression and a greater number of violent offenses • Both social/contextual and individual/clinical scales were more strongly predictive of violent offending in boys than in girls

19. SAVRY Protective Factors • Although the SAVRY protective factors were negatively correlated with aggression and antisocial behavior (rs = -.13 to -.28), they did not contribute in the context of a regression model once the risk factors or general risk rating were entered (R2 non-significant) • Also, gender did not appear to moderate the pattern of association between the SAVRY’s protective factors and outcome

20. Discussion • The SAVRY was associated with a number of self-report indices of aggression and violence • However, protective factors did not appear to contribute beyond the risk scales • Overall, the SAVRY was associated with aggression in both boys and girls; however, some differences occurred • Clinical risk rating more strongly associated with violent offending in males • Social and individual risk factors similarly more predictive of violent offending in males

21. Limitations and Future Directions • Concurrent, self-report measures of aggression and antisocial behavior used • The SAVRY attempts to gage future violent risk; • Therefore, need prospective designs to genuinely assess the measure’s validity • Further examine gender differences in the predictive utility of the SAVRY • Current findings suggest that the SAVRY may be more catered to adolescent males • Implications for the development of gender sensitive risk measures