SAVRY Use Among Mississippi Justice Involved Youth: Psychometric Assessment

• In Event: Making the Most of Survey Measures in Criminal Justice Research

Abstract

The SAVRY is a widely used instrument for identifying risk for future violence among youth involved in the juvenile justice system (JJS). It is comprised of 24 risk items grouped into three domains (historical, social/contextual, and individual/clinical). Given the limited research on the SAVRY, there is a need to confirm its psychometric properties. We report results of a study of the SAVRY among youth in the Mississippi JJS. Confirmatory factor analyses were completed on the SAVRY domains to determine if each factor fit our SAVRY data. Results indicated only the individual/clinical risk measures, overall and for both male and female youth, fit well. Exploratory factor analyses were then pursued on the 24 SAVRY risk measures. Exploratory factor analyses, overall and for males-females, examined the fit of different numbers of SAVRY factors to the data. Multi-group logistic regression analyses were then completed involving SAVRY factors best fitting our data together with youth demographic factors of age at initial entry, being White and being Black as predictors of one-year recidivism. Results identified similar and gender specific longitudinal predictor effects on recidivism among the male and female youth. Implications for further studies of the SAVRY are drawn.

Authors

• Richard Dembo, University of South Florida

• Angela A. Robertson, Mississippi State University

• Sheena Gardner, Mississippi State University