Predictive validity despite social desirability: evidence for the robustness of self‐report among offenders

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Many professionals believe that self-report questionnaires used to predict recidivism have a low validity. The aim of the present study was to investigate the assumption that the validity of self-report is vulnerable to self-presentation biases in offender samples. METHOD: The participants consisted of 124 male offenders who volunteered to complete the Self-Appraisal Questionnaire (SAQ). RESULTS: Lower scores on measures of social desirability were significantly associated with higher levels of risk (as measured by self-report and a rated actuarial instrument) and a higher likelihood to re-offend. Further, stepwise regression analysis revealed that social desirability added significantly unique variance in the prediction of violent recidivism. DISCUSSION: The authors propose that impression management may be an enduring person-based characteristic within an offender sample rather than a situationally determined response style. The variance associated with this characterological information is proposed to be the source of the unique predictive variance.

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