Abstract
The Offender Personality Disorder (OPD) Pathway faces the difficult task of identifying individuals who are eligible for their service from the entire probation caseload. The OASys Personality Disorder Screen (OASys PD) is a national screening tool used by the pathway to help with this task. This paper describes an evaluation of the effectiveness of this plus an additional screening tool currently used to identify eligible individuals for the OPD service in the South of England. Recommendations for improvements were made as necessary.
A mixed methods design used a quantitative analysis of data on the effectiveness of the OASys PD for correctly identifying individuals and a thematic analysis of a focus-group conducted with clinicians within the service.
Analysis revealed a positive predictive value of the OASys PD Screen of 72% and a negative predictive value of 91%. Key themes from the focus-group revealed what worked well about the screening process, what was difficult and what needed to be improved.
The OASys PD performed better than the clinicians had expected. It was recommended that the service continued to use the combination of the screening tool and the interviews with minor adjustments.
This is the first research study of this kind on the effectiveness of the OASys tool.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 199-211 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Journal | Journal of Forensic Practice |
| Volume | 22 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 17 Jul 2020 |
Keywords
- Mixed methods
- OASys
- Offender personality disorder pathway
- Personality disorder
- Probation
- Screening
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Pathology and Forensic Medicine
- Applied Psychology
- Psychiatry and Mental health
- Law
Access to Document
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The final publication is available at Emerald via https://doi.org/10.1108/JFP-09-2019-0043