Speaker: Carrie Smith, York University
Department of Psychology

Title: Evaluation of Intimate Partner Risk Assessment Inventories

Abstract: In the interest of improving transparency, replicability, and validity, many jurisdictions and agencies are now favouring the use of empirically validated measures in violence risk assessment. To date, dozens of risk assessment inventories have been proposed for use in the domestic violence context, but none have been properly validated and their predictive efficacy remains limited.  In this talk, I will discuss the methodological limitations of the existing literature, the challenges in producing defensible research in this domain, and the ethical implications of actuarial style risk assessment in the domestic violence context.  I hope to inspire discussion about ways to improve the quality of future research in this important domain.