Agreement between ratings from self-rating scales and assessments by treatment staff concerning a group of adolescent males who have sexually offended

Abstract

Despite problems of validity, self-report measurements are used in clinical practice and research. The aim here was to compare self-ratings by adolescent males who had sexually offended with assessments of the same adolescents made by professionals. Results of two self-report questionnaires were compared with staff estimates. It was assumed that observability of behaviour, social desirability of the adolescents' responses, intellectual difficulties and the presence of neuropsychiatric problems would affect the level of agreement between participant and professional responses. Agreement between staff estimates and self-ratings was generally low. However, some results supported the assumptions: i.e. higher levels of agreement on observable behaviour, higher levels of agreement for adolescents scoring low on social desirability and, most obviously, lower levels of agreement for boys with neuropsychiatric diagnoses. Discrepancies between what adolescents say about themselves through self-ratings and how professionals perceive them cause problems in assessments that rely on self-rating measurements.

Keywords:

• Adolescents who sexually offend
• neuropsychiatric diagnosis
• observability
• self-report measurements
• social desirability