VALIDITY OF THE LEVEL OF SERVICE INVENTORY–REVISED (LSI-R) AMONG AFRICAN AMERICAN AND HISPANIC MALE

The Level of Service Inventory–Revised (LSI-R) is a dynamic risk/needs assessment instrument that has been used exten-sively among a variety of offender samples. Validity research on the LSI-R, however, is based on samples consisting pre-dominantly of Caucasian participants. The present study sought to examine the psychometric properties and validity of the instrument among a sample of African American and Hispanic male offenders. Participants were 446 male parolees residing in three halfway houses and one day reporting center. Three hundred and thirty-four offenders (75 % of the sample) were of African American heritage and 112 (25%) were of Hispanic heritage. Analyses of the psychometric properties and validity of the LSI-R were conducted separately for each ethnic group. Results indicated the instrument had acceptable psychometric properties, but that the predictive validity results were lower than previous studies on the LSI-R. Results are discussed within the context of the invariance of risk variables and the applicability of the LSI-R to various offender groups