Threat assessment: defining an approach for evaluating risk of targeted violence.

Although the field of risk assessment has made tremendous advances in the past 20 years, assessments of targeted violence continue to pose a significant challenge to law enforcement, mental health, and other professionals. These specific and critical assessments require an innovative approach. The threat assessment model, developed and refined by the U.S. Secret Service, provides a useful framework for thinking about assessments of potential for targeted violence. In this paper, we attempt to define this approach as it has been developed by the Secret Service, and apply it within the existing professional/scientific literature on risk assessment. We begin with a brief review of existing models and approaches in risk assessment, and identification of some gaps in our existing knowledge as it relates to assessments of targeted violence. We then proceed with an outline of the threat assessment approach, including a review of principles and guiding operational questions, and discussion of its use in assessment of targeted violence.     

Toward an integrative,pluralistic psychology: On the hermeneutico-dialogical conditions of the possibility for overcoming fragmentation

While casting the long-standing problem of fragmentation in a new light, the recent resurgence of interest in pluralism also poses fresh challenges regarding how this pluralism is to be harnessed in the service of integration. In response, the present paper seeks to vindicate the merits of, and to elaborate on the possibilities inherent in, the hermeneutico-dialogical proposal proffered by Yanchar, Slife and associates over a decade ago, but whose potential has remained underexplored in the intervening period. More specifically, the aim is to gain a renewed hearing for this proposal by foregrounding its distinctive possibilities as a means of harnessing pluralism in the interests of overcoming fragmentation. To this end, following a brief review of the status of the problem, I revisit the merits of integrative pluralism as a response to fragmentation as a prelude to elaborating on how the hermeneutico-dialogical proposal can facilitate this. Thereafter, I focus on elucidating the conditions of the possibility for engaging in the requisite sort of dialogical interaction, and expanding on its epistemological, methodological, and ontological underpinnings. The paper concludes with a brief defense of the practical viability of this proposal in response to anticipated charges of utopianism.     

Forced-choice assessments of personality for selection: evaluating issues of normative assessment and faking resistance

Recent research suggests multidimensional forced-choice (MFC) response formats may provide resistance to purposeful response distortion on personality assessments. It remains unclear, however, whether these formats provide normative trait information required for selection contexts. The current research evaluated score correspondences between an MFC format measure and 2 Likert-type measures in honest and instructed-faking conditions. In honest response conditions, scores from the MFC measure appeared valid indicators of normative trait standing. Under faking conditions, the MFC measure showed less score inflation than the Likert measure at the group level of analysis. In the individual-level analyses, however, the MFC measure was as affected by faking as was the Likert measure. Results suggest the MFC format is not a viable method to control faking.     

Informant discrepancies in the assessment of childhood psychopathology: a critical review, theoretical framework, and recommendations for further study

Discrepancies often exist among different informants' (e.g., parents, children, teachers) ratings of child psychopathology. Informant discrepancies have an impact on the assessment, classification, and treatment of childhood psychopathology. Empirical work has identified informant characteristics that may influence informant discrepancies. Limitations of previous work include inconsistent measurement of informant discrepancies and, perhaps most importantly, the absence of a theoretical framework to guide research. In this article, the authors present a theoretical framework (the Attribution Bias Context Model) to guide research and theory examining informant discrepancies in the clinic setting. Needed directions for future research and theory include theoretically driven attention to conceptualizing informant discrepancies across informant pairs (e.g., parent-teacher, mother-father, parent-child, teacher-child) as well as developing experimental approaches to decrease informant discrepancies in the clinic setting.