OJJDP Girls Study Group Review of Assessment Instruments for Delinquent Girls
This new guide of assessment tools reviews 143 commonly used assessments through the lens of whether or not they are useful for guiding decisions and programming for girls. It comes from OJJDP's Girls Study Group http://girlsstudygroup.rti.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=dsp_home, which includes many of the preeminent researchers on girls and delinquency. It will be of great interest to mentoring programs serving girls and working on delinquency prevention.
With the increased prevalence of girls in the juvenile justice system, some have questioned whether available assessment instruments are appropriate for girls. Assessment tools are used to guide decisions within the juvenile justice system, and judges, case managers, probation staff, and related professionals often rely on such standardized instruments to assess the risks and needs of youth. However, research that has systematically examined the extent to which instruments used in the juvenile justice system are valid for girls is lacking.
It takes a little wading through, and it will be interesting to see if the study group issues any sort of overarching analysis to help guide practitioners in choosing and properly utilizing assessment instruments with girls!
The GSG reviewed two types of instruments:
* risk and risk/needs assessment instruments to predict outcomes, most often recidivism; and
* treatment-focused instruments used to determine treatment needs or diagnose various disorders. The treatment-focused instruments were limited to three categories: global needs assessment, substance abuse, and mental health.
The review iincludes instruments explicitly developed for justice-involved youth, as well as instruments not developed specifically for justice-involved youth but that cover relevant clinical issues (e.g., suicide risk).
Here is a link to the list of assessments (again, it is not for the faint-of-heart, since it includes 143 assessments!):
http://girlsstudygroup.rti.org/dsp_instrument_list.cfm.
Thankfully there is a search tool that allows you to search by age group, whether the assessment is commercially or publicly available, whether norms are available, how long the assessment takes, and how it relates to gender variables and girl-specific domains.
http://girlsstudygroup.rti.org/dsp_instrument_search.cfm