Youth Offending Risk Screening Tool (YORST) Reports

These reports look into the assessment and validation of the Youth Offending Risk Screening Tool (YORST).

The first report responds to a request by the New Zealand Police to conduct a literature review of risk screening instruments for youth offenders, with a particular focus on the methods used to establish validity and reliability of these tools, including validation across cultures. The purpose of the literature review is to inform a larger project that aims to assess the validity, reliability and predictive capability of the New Zealand Police Youth Offending Risk Screening Tool (YORST).

The second report presents key findings from the last sub-component of Phase II, testing the predictive ability of the existing YORST. This includes the testing of the accuracy of the existing total YORST score to predict recidivism, an analysis of the relative contribution and utility of individual YORST items, and an exploration of whether an alternative combination, formation or transformation of items or additional variables are better able to predict recidivism.