In a wide range of counselling situations, including those involving offenders,
researchers have bemoaned the lack of consensus about outcome. Some
researchers have argued that a lack of consensus is due to the fact that the
different sources retain unique points of view, which can never be amalgamated
into a common outcome. The current paper argues that, while sources will have
their own unique perspective, it is possible to develop a meaningful consensus,
if it is done very carefully. The factors which need to be taken into
consideration are: measuring different outcomes; the different interpretation of
the question by each source; and bias.
An important outcome in correctional settings is an offender's current level of
criminality, or likelihood of reoffending. It was hypothesised that the 12
Probation and Parole Officers' predictions about the likelihood of recidivism of
368 offenders would correlate with fresh charges recorded within 12 months by
the Magistrates Court. This hypothesis was supported. It was also
hypothesised that the Level of Service Inventory - Revised (LSI-R) would also
correlate with fresh charges and that the former correlation would be different
to the latter. While the LSI-R did correlate significantly with fresh charges, the
predictions of the Probation and Parole Officers were not significantly different.
The use of correlation coefficients to assess predictive validity has been
criticised as they are affected by base rates of offending and selection ratios of
offenders to high and low risk categories. However when a more appropriate
statistical tool, the area under the Receiver Operating Characteristic curve
(ROC) was employed, the results were not substantially different. The
predictive abilities of offenders was also tested against the same criterion and
Intersource Agreement on the Prediction Recidivism
were found sorely wanting, failing to correlate with fresh charges or any of the
other predictive measures. It is argued that the offenders failed to predict
accurately because of bias and/or poor ability to predict their own behaviour.
The ability of the Probation and Parole Officers to predict reoffending to a much
greater level than usually recorded in the criminological literature was ascribed
to the higher level of information about their own predictive abilities, through a
natural feedback mechanism which does not usually apply to professionals
making clinical predictions about recidivism, and to training in predictors of
reoffending which they received when they were trained in the administration
of the LSI-R.
It was also found that the ability of the LSI-R to predict recidivism was
improved by incorporating offender age through linear regression.
Suggestions were made for improving consensus among sources in counselling
outcome studies. In particular, it was noted that sources do not necessarily
interpret the question in the manner the researcher desires and it may be
necessary to test the subjects' ability to distinguish between similar questions
when this distinction is important.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/219246 |
| Date | January 2002 |
| Creators | Parker, Richard John, n/a |
| Publisher | University of Canberra. Professional & Community Education |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | ), Copyright Richard John Parker |
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