The Level of Service Inventory-Self-Report (LSISR) is a pencil-and-paper, self-report version of the LSI (i.e., a risk assessment instrument that was designed to identify adult offenders’ likelihood of reoffending) and its subsequently published version, the LSI-R. Originally known simply as the Self-Report Inventory and sometimes referred to as the LSI-R:SR, the LSI-SR was developed by Michelle Motiuk in 1988. The instrument adhered to the principles and content of the original LSI, but it allowed for its completion by the offender, as opposed to a correctional professional, such as a probation officer or psychologist. The LSI-SR was developed in part because of the time and resources that correctional agencies had to commit in order to conduct a single LSI. Since it was common to ask offenders to complete other psychological assessment instruments, such as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, in a self-report, but supervised, manner, it was reasoned that the same format could work with an offender risk/need assessment. This article describes the items on the LSI-SR, the empirical evidence for its concurrent and predictive validity, and its place among offender management tools.
Items
The LSI-SR consists of 78 items in a questionnaire format. Most of the items are answered in a yes–no manner, although some questions ask for a specific number, and there is one 4-point, Likert-type scale item. Items are grouped in the same 10 domains found in the original LSI and the LSIR. They include the following: 9 criminal history items (e.g., “Have you ever been arrested as a juvenile?”); 7 education/employment items (e.g., “Have you ever been fired from a job?”); 4 financial items (e.g., “I have been on welfare or unemployment insurance.”); 9 family/marital items (e.g., “Both parents are deceased.”); 5 accommodation items (e.g., “I have no fixed address.”); 5 leisure/recreation items (e.g., “During my spare time, I spend a lot of time in criminal activity or planning a job.”); 5 companion-related items (e.g., “Not counting relatives, how many people do you know have a criminal record or have been involved in crime?”); 22 alcohol/drug-related items (e.g., “When I drink I tend to get in trouble with the law.”); 6 emotional/personal items (e.g., “Have you ever attempted suicide?”); and 6 attitude/ orientation items (e.g., “All laws should be strictly obeyed.”). Another self-report offender risk assessment instrument that includes many of the same domains as the LSI-SR is the Self-Appraisal Questionnaire.
Validity
Motiuk’s original research yielded encouraging results for the validity of the LSI-SR. The measure was highly correlated with a traditionally conducted, interview-based LSI assessment (r = .78) on a sample of incarcerated adult, male offenders. The 10 domains of the LSI-SR were highly correlated with the corresponding interview-based domains of the LSI, with the exception of the financial and attitude/orientation sections. Moreover, six of the individual sections of the LSI-SR were highly correlated with independent self-report measures of constructs that the LSI-SR sections were designed to capture (r = .33 to .60). These included scholastic maladjustment, family dissention, urge to use alcohol/drugs, identification with criminal others, attitudes toward the courts, and anxiety. In terms of predictive validity, the LSI-SR correlated modestly with subsequent prison misconduct, parole violations, and reincarceration (r = .17 to .29). There are a couple of important caveats that should be noted with respect to these initial findings regarding the LSI-SR. First, offenders were screened for their reading proficiency on the Wide Range Achievement Test before being admitted to the study. Using a Grade 6 criterion, 17% of the volunteer prisoners were excluded. Therefore, the validity findings of this study would be applicable to a similarly selected group of literate offenders. Second, the study did not include any assessment of social desirability, faking, or other kinds of participant response set. Hence, the convergent validity correlations between the sections of the self-report LSI-SR and their corresponding alternative self-report measures may be inflated by virtue of their common method of data collection (i.e., self-report). For example, offenders who minimize their antisocial attitudes on the attitude section of the LSI-SR would likely also do so on the independent measurement of their tolerance for law violation.
The subsequent empirical evidence for the predictive validity of the LSI-R:SV is limited but positive. Another study has demonstrated good predictive validity of the LSI-SR with incarcerated, adult women offenders (r = .30). A meta-analysis by Mark Olver and colleagues reported on five LSI-SR studies having a mean correlation of .38 with general recidivism and on two studies with a mean correlation of .28 with violent recidivism.
Final Thoughts
The LSI-SR has not seen the same growth that other versions of the LSI have experienced. This is quite likely because of the hesitation of correctional professionals to use the results of an assessment that is based solely on the offender’s own input when it comes to making critical decisions about the offender’s management. These decisions include security level in custody, release from custody, the determination of supervision intensity in the community, and the type and intensity of rehabilitation programming to which the offender might be referred. These are very different contexts from a research setting where there are no particular consequences for answering the LSI-SR questions one way or another. Nonetheless, it remains an interesting research tool, as are other self-report measures of antisocial constructs including psychopathy, antisocial personality, and criminal thinking, all of which are correlated with the LSI-SR.
References:
- Andrews, D. A., & Bonta, J. (1995). The Level of Service Inventory-Revised: User’s manual. Toronto, Canada: Multi-Health Systems.
- Bonta, J., & Andrews, D. A. (2017). The psychology of criminal conduct (6th ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.
- Folsom, J., & Atkinson, J. L. (2007). The generalizability of the LSI-R and the CAT to the prediction of recidivism in female offenders. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 34, 1004–1056.
- Loza, W., & Loza-Fanous, A. (2000). Predictive validity of the Self-Appraisal Questionnaire (SAQ): A tool for assessing violent and non-violent release failures. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 15, 1183–1191. doi:10.1177/088626000015011005
- Motiuk, M. S. (1988). The utilization of a self-report inventory in assessing incarcerated offenders (Unpublished master’s thesis). Ottawa, Canada: University of Ottawa.
- Motiuk, M. S., Motiuk, L. L., & Bonta, J. (1992). A comparison between self-report and interview-based inventories in offender classification. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 19, 143–159.
- Olver, M. E., Stockdale, K. C., & Wormith, J. S. (2014). Thirty years of research on the Level of Service scales: A meta-analytic examination of predictive accuracy and sources of variability. Psychological Assessment, 26, 156–176.