Risk Assessment:
What You Should Know
David J.
Baxter
The Accidental Jurist, April 2003
© David J. Baxter, 2003
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When you’re looking for a lawyer, you don’t just pick someone blindly
out of the telephone book. At the very least, you’d select one
based on advertised areas of expertise (criminal, family, real estate,
civil, etc.) and match his or her expertise to your specific
requirements at the time. More than likely, you’d seek a
recommendation from someone you know who has been in a similar
situation or had similar needs for legal advice and representation.
Clearly, all lawyers are not created equal – the same is true for
psychologists.
So if you have concerns about an employee’s emotional health or
stability, and specifically that person’s potential for workplace
violence, the first thing you need to do is to locate a psychologist or
other mental health professional (1) who has some experience and
expertise in the area of workplace violence, and (2) who has the
requisite training and expertise to conduct an adequate
empirically-based assessment of the risk that employee might present.
In any assessment of risk involving a question of danger to self or
others, there are a few basic requirements. First, it is very
clear from research on “prediction of dangerousness” that basing such
predictions solely on clinical interviews and clinical intuition is
little better than a guess – empirical research tells us in effect that
clinical prediction adds little or no predictive accuracy to what is
already available from past history (i.e., the old adage that “the best
predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour”). Thus, we need
objective estimates of risk which evaluate factors known to be
empirically related to certain types of potentially dangerous
behaviour. Second, in conducting a risk assessment for any
forensic issue, the psychologist needs to be aware that there is a
significant potential for dissimulation (whether that be in the
direction of minimization or exaggeration) and to ensure that the
assessment instruments used to determine risk are therefore capable of
detecting dissimulation and taking it into account in interpreting and
drawing conclusions from the assessment.
Exactly which psychological tests are used in a risk assessment depends
to some extent on the questions which are being asked in the
assessment, but there is usually more than one standardized and
empirically-validated test that could be appropriate.
Consequently, in test selection, it is critical that the
psychologist has adequate training and experience with particular tests
and their use with specific forensic clients. Beyond this, the
selection of tests should be guided by the following criteria:
(1) the tests should have a reasonably large research database and
preferably will have been validated in languages and cultures other
than English and western nations; (2) they should either include
“validity scales” which allow one to determine the extent to which the
client was minimizing or exaggerating or otherwise attempting to
distort the assessment findings, or the nature of the test should be
such that it is virtually impossible to “fake”; (3) the tests should be
capable of detecting subtle signs of borderline psychotic thinking and
evaluating critical factors such as adequacy of impulse controls,
propensity for aggressive acting-out, paranoid ideas, etc.; and (4) the
assessment battery should include one of the empirically-derived tests
developed specifically to provide numerical estimates of risk for
future criminal or antisocial acts.
In seeking expert advice on risk assessment, it is
important that you satisfy yourself and your clients that the
individual you consult has had sufficient training and experience to
develop an understanding of the important empirical predictors of
dangerousness in the specific venue of concern (e.g., workplace
violence, domestic violence, child abuse, etc.), as well as adequate
training and experience in the use of the psychological tests which are
to be used in conducting the assessment.
Dr. Baxter
is a Registered Psychologist in private practice in
Ottawa. |
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