NCJ Number
211574
Journal
International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology Volume: 49 Issue: 5 Dated: October 2005 Pages: 547-560
Date Published
October 2005
Length
14 pages
Annotation
The Self-Appraisal Questionnaire (SAQ)--a 72-item self-report measure for predicting violent and nonviolent recidivism among adult male offenders--was administered to 91 female offenders incarcerated in Pennsylvania and 183 women incarcerated in Singapore correctional systems.
Abstract
In addition to determining the reliability and validity of the SAQ for use with female offenders, the study also sought to determine whether the SAQ is valid for use with White, African-American, and Asian female offenders. The women were also administered the Level of Service Inventory-Revised, which is a 54-item inventory designed to assess risk or need in the context of making decisions on supervision requirements for probation or parole. Comparisons between the findings of this study and previous similar studies with Canadian and Singaporean male offenders show strong correlations between the SAQ and the LSI-R total scores and the SAQ subscales and the LSI-R total scores. These results are encouraging, given that other measures valid for use with male offenders were found not to be valid for use with female offenders. The insignificant differences between the responses of the African-American and Asian offenders compared with White offenders on the total SAQ score provided some support for the hypothesis that the SAQ could be used with some ethnically diverse female offender groups. The authors suggest that future researchers examine the psychometric properties of the SAQ with female offenders from other countries with different ethnic backgrounds in different forensic and correctional settings. 3 tables, 1 figure, and 45 references