Title

Recrafting Youth Risk Assessment: Developing the Modified Positive Achievement Change Tool for Iowa

Authors

Zachary Hamilton, Washington State University
Melissa A. Kowalski, State University of New York College at Brockport
Roger L. Schaefer, Central Washington UniversityFollow
Alex Kigerl, Washington State University

Document Type

Article

Department or Administrative Unit

Law and Justice

Publication Date

4-25-2019

Abstract

Risk assessments have become prevalent in the juvenile justice field. Many of these tools are adopted off-the-shelf and not adapted to fit the characteristics of a jurisdiction’s justice-involved youth. We examined the Positive Achievement Change Tool (PACT) in Iowa. Although used widely, the PACT is relatively unmodified. We updated the tool via item selection and weighting, gender-specific models and multiple outcomes, developing the Modified Positive Achievement Change Tool (M-PACT) for Iowa. We identified an average predictive accuracy increase of 7%. Evidence of reduced racial disparity was also observed, and research implications outline the need to customize assessments to improve predictive accuracy.

Comments

This article was originally published in Deviant Behavior. The full-text article from the publisher can be found here.

Due to copyright restrictions, this article is not available for free download from ScholarWorks @ CWU.

Recommended Citation

Hamilton, Z., Kowalski, M. A., Schaefer, R., & Kigerl, A. (2019). Recrafting Youth Risk Assessment: Developing the Modified Positive Achievement Change Tool for Iowa. Deviant Behavior, 41(10), 1268–1289. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2019.1609302

Journal

Deviant Behavior