First Place in Poster Category – Social Science, Information Literacy Excellence Award Runner-Up

STUDENT: Elizabeth Trojan

ADVISOR: Dr. Renae McNair

ABSTRACT:

The Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) is a widely used measure in forensics to assess individuals’ violence/risk. However, the PCL-R was developed to measure psychopathy, and scores have shown variation with differing evaluators. This conceptual research study was designed to investigate the reliability and validity of the PCL-R when used as a violence/risk assessment for incarcerated offenders. Two hypotheses were formulated based on a review of the literature; the PCL-R is an unreliable measure for the violence/risk assessment of incarcerated offenders, as results vary across forensic evaluators, and the PCL-R is an invalid measure for violence/risk assessment of incarcerated offenders, as it was designed to measure psychopathic tendencies. A sample of 1500 participants (n=1500) was used, with 500 forensic evaluators and a representative sample of 1000 incarcerated offenders across Pennsylvania prisons. Each evaluator conducted violence/risk assessments on four offenders using the PCL-R, providing two scores for each offender for comparison. The expected result for this study is a correlation between variation in forensic evaluators and variation in PCL-R scores of the same offender – showcasing a lack of reliability and validity in the measure. These findings implicate the need for further research into the use of the PCL-R as a violence/risk assessment – possibly the need for revocation of its use in this form.