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Lecture 4: Structuring Your Case

Report-GENERAL TIPS!!

Dr Tochukwu Onwuegbusi: PSY3003M Risk Module

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Overview

How to do well in your case

report
Focus on the structure and
content
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Assessment

 A report from the Office for National Statistics shows that domestic-abuse
related crimes in England and Wales has significantly increased last year to a
new record high (844, 955 offences in 2021 cf. 798,607 offences in 2020). The
police are particularly concerned about the number of people committing a
repeat offence, however following Government cutbacks their resources to
deal with this are being stretched.
 As a forensic psychologist with expertise in risk analysis you have been
brought in to produce a report which advises the Police on suitable proposals
for addressing the problem of managing potentially dangerous individuals
who are at risk of committing domestic abuse related crimes. This needs to
be done in light of current government policy and public opinion.
Based on your knowledge of risk assessment and analysis you have been 5
asked to develop a way of assessing risk of committing domestic abuse
offences.

1. How would you extrapolate from the forensic risk literature to go about
developing such a measure?
a) What steps would you take to develop your new measure?
b) How would you ensure it was a reliable/valid measure that was
predictive of the risk of engaging in knife or sharp instrument offences?

2. Drawing on the risk perception and communication literature, if you had

such a measure what advice would you give concerning its use?
a) What issues might there be in using this measure and communicating
this information to the public?
b) What recommendations would you make to address those issues?
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Remember !!!!!!!!

oRemember you are being asked HOW

you would design the measure rather
than to actually design one.
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Assessment tip!

 It is a “how to” question  more about the process than the outcome
 Imagine you are studying architecture: talk me through step by step
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Structuring Your Report

Individually
write down the Think about the
key components question and see if
of the you can identify the
assessment key elements in the
question
question
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Structuring Your Report

Key components (Main Body):

Introduction Advice regarding use
Extrapolating from Forensic Issues with use/
Literature communication
Recommendations to
Steps to develop measure
address issues
Check Reliability/Validity Conclusion
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Structuring Your Report

A forensic expert report: Guide

to developing violence abuse
TITLE: risk assessment tool

You should include the title of the assessment and additionally

present a name and your qualifications.

Please think of pseudonym (false name) and you may wish to list
the qualifications you think appropriate for a professional
psychologist presenting this type of report / or present your own
present qualifications.
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Structuring Your Report

Professor Lady Gaga, CPsychol, AFBPS, FHEA

I am a Professor of Forensic Psychology at the University of Liverpool. I have a

BSc in Psychology at the University of Oxford (2006), an MSc in Forensic
Psychology with the University of Lincoln (2008) and a PhD from the
University of Leicester (2015). I am HCPC registered forensic psychologist and
have 10 years experience in risk analysis in both clinical and forensic contexts.
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Structuring Your Report

INSTRUCTIONS FROM THE POLICE:

Provide instructions which refers to main focus of report with
reference to instructions which have been provided in the case
scenario

Paraphrase
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Structuring Your Report

Conclusions:

Following your paraphrasing of the instructions, succinctly bullet-

point the conclusions you have made following the completion of
your report – this is the equivalent of an executive summary although
you are identifying the pertinent points that the police would be able
to read in order to gain a high level overview of the report and your
advice.
Your conclusion should contain a succinct summary of main
components in the report
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Structuring Your Report

Conclusions:
Bullet point 1:
Bullet point 2
Bullet point 3
Bullet point 4
Bullet point 5
Bullet point 6
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Structuring Your Report

What is wrong with this
conclusion?
Conclusions:
 There are three main approaches to risk assessment currently in use: the Clinical
judgement approach, the Actuarial approach, and the Structured Professional
Judgement (SPJ) approach
 Clinical judgements are subjective and have low predictive validity and therefore will
not be considered in the development of the current risk assessment
 Although, actuarial risk assessments rely heavily upon statistics of the offender and
from this create a ‘risk score’, the use of group data to determine the probability of an
individual has been debated regarding appropriateness
 In the case of the current report, it is focusing on preventing reoffending, therefore, it
is more appropriate to create an SPJ risk assessment that can be used to assess risk
and develop risk management plans, thus attempting to stop reoffending
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Structuring Your Report

METHODS:

Provide a brief account of methods used to research and construct

report
Sources of information relied upon- academic journals, policy
information, police procedural information
You may also include lists of bibliography databases used-
PsychInfo, Criminal Justice Abstracts, PsychArticles, Web of Science
etc..
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Structuring Your Report

REPORT(main body (meat) of the report):

This is the main significant section of the report and allows you to
provide the details that address the question(s) posed in the
assignment and reflected in your instructions.
Please provide numbering for each heading/subheadings you include in
the main body of the report and use this in your recommendations
section to cross reference (see recommendations).
When you are referring to the sources of information you have used in
your report, please use footnotes rather than writing out the citation in
brackets as you would in an academic essay
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Structuring Your Report- MAIN BODY

 Sets the context of the report

Key components:  What do we know about the issue? [prevalence,
statistics, ]
Introduction  Why is this a risk issue?
 State rationale for risk assessment. Individual
differences in risk perception –make reference to
psychometric paradigm, media and risk perception
 Outline the main aims of the report. Refer to the
question
 Say how those aims will be met
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Structuring Your Report

Steps to develop measure

Key components: Provide base
Provide a
Consider
Examine the
Understanding comprehensive stengths and
rates on the methodologies
and defining literature weaknesses of
behaviour of risk
the behaviour. review of risk previous risk
being assessed. assessments.
Extrapolating from factors. assessments.

Figure 1. A schematic representation of steps taken to develop

Forensic Literature the new measure

QUESTION: QUESTION:
How would you extrapolate a)What steps would
from the forensic risk
literature to go about
you take to develop
developing such a measure? your new measure?
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Structuring Your Report

Key components:  Provide a statutory as well as scholarly

definition of domestic abuse.
Extrapolating from Forensic
 Also provide information showing the cost
Literature
of domestic abuse to the victims,
QUESTION: government
Also ensure your writingand taxsome
reflects payers [See Home
How would you extrapolate from Office
evidence from publication,
forensic literatureBCS,
as wellONS]
as
critical analysis. If you are unsure of how to
the forensic risk literature to go this,
do Define
ask. base rates and say why this is necessary
about developing such a
measure?

Structuring Your Report
Key components:
Extrapolating from Forensic
Literature
QUESTION:
How would you extrapolate from
the forensic risk literature to go
about developing such a
measure?
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Why is this literature review on risk factors necessary?
Define risk factors including static, dynamic and
protective factors with reference
Provide examples of previous risk assessment
instruments that focused on either static factors alone
See Lecture 6 and 7 for
(e.g., Static-99R) or dynamic factors alone. Then say
discussion on risk factors
why this is a problem. Use evidence from the forensic
literature to justify why both factors including
protective factors need to be considered and say the
new measure will take the three factors into account

Structuring Your Report
Key components:
Extrapolating from Forensic
Literature
QUESTION:
How would you extrapolate from
the forensic risk literature to go
about developing such a
measure?
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 Consider methodologies/approaches to risk assessments (Lecture 7)
 First say why it is important to consider this
 Then describe each of the three approaches including their strengths and
limitations.
 For instance, clinical approach is subjective and has low predictive validity
(Justin & Bieber, 2015), therefore cannot be used in the new measure
 Actuarial approach on the other hand, though has a high predictive
validity particularly for predicting violence offence (Borris, 2017), research
has challenged its reliance on group data to determine the probability of
an individual committing future offence (Johnson, 2019). Provide one
example or two actuarial tools and use evidence from the literature to
evaluate the use of those tools.
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Structuring Your Report

 Justify why this is necessary. For e.g., what do we know about risk
Key components: prediction/risk judgement? What issues are there with false
positives and false negatives in risk prediction? (see Lecture 5 & 9)
 Describe how you will check the reliability of the new measure
QUESTION: (e.g., inter-rater reliability)
How would you ensure it was a reliable/valid
 Describe how you will check the validity of the new measure (e.g.,
measure that was predictive of the risk of
engaging in domestic abuse offences construct or predictive validity)
 What research designs would you employ to test these (e.g.,
prospective and retrospective methodology)? Describe the design
and justify
 To assess overall (predictive) accuracy of the tool, ROC would be
used. Explain what ROC means, justify and describe its usage in
Check Reliability/Validity light of the new measure
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Structuring Your Report

Key components:  Provide Training- Explain using evidence

Advice regarding use
QUESTION:
Drawing on the risk perception and
communication literature, if you had such a
measure what advice would you give
concerning its use?
 Provide instructions regarding use. For example, the
assessment tool must be used by professionals
(psychologists) and given as soon as cases of
domestic abuse crimes are reported or to individuals
showing probable signs of committing a domestic
abuse offence.
 Provide information about scoring and interpreting
the scores following assessment
 What should assessors be aware of?
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Structuring Your Report

Key components:  Highlight the importance of the media in RP and its

Issues with use/ influence on people’s perception of risk (e.g.,
overestimation/underestimation of risks)
communication
 Highlight the importance of communicating your new
measure to the public
QUESTION: Lay people’s perception of riskiness is highly correlated to
What issues might there be in using this  Apply your knowledge of principles of communication
the factor dread.
measure and communicating this information (e.g., Cialdini’s principles of persuasive communication)
to the public?
Theand say the
higher howriskthey canisbe
topic usedon
judged in this
this factor,
regardthe higher

its perceived
Use otherrisk and theon
literature more
risk people want to see
communication its
(e.g.,
current risks reduced
Fischhoff, 1995) inand regulatedyour
structuring (Slovic et al., 1985).
answer
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Structuring Your Report

Key components:  If members of the public perceive risk of domestic abuse as non-
dread risk, what impact does this have on the new measure?
Issues with use/ Think not necessary
communication  For instance, members of the public may think that domestic
abusers are ‘sick in the brain’ or ‘mentally deranged’ always pose
a high risk, thus nothing can be done to change their behaviour.
QUESTION:
 This suggests they may have doubt about the utility of the new
What issues might there be in using this
measure and communicating this information risk measure in assessing individuals at risk of committing
to the public? domestic abuse offences or perhaps they could argue that the
new measure is unnecessary
 Also refer to literature on why persuasive communication doesn’t
work to support the arguments above
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Structuring Your Report

First reiterate the importance of risk communication. What is risk

communication? (Lecture 10)
Key components: Theory of nudge might be relevant here
Recommend use of Fischhoff’s 7 developmental stages for
Recommendations to communicating risk e.g., compare stats to other risks to put into
perspective
address issues Say to address the issues, you are going to apply the principles of
persuasive communication (Cialdini) to encourage public
support[Explain].
QUESTION:
b) What recommendations You may also refer to Covello & Allen (1998) cardinal principles of
persuasive communication. Explain these principles in the light of the
would you make to address problem you’ve identified. Also refer to Fischhoff (2005) approaches to
those issues? risk communication, which aspects of the objectives might be relevant?
Think of other ways to address the issues highlighted
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Structuring Your Report

Key components:  A good report must finish with clear

Conclusion and Recommendation
and concise conclusion
 Highlight the pertinent points
discussed
 What is your TAKE-HOME message?
 CONCLUSION should be presented as
bullet points before METHODS
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Structuring Your Report

 Also, provide a small number of practical

Key components: recommendations.
 Make cross-references to main body of report.
 What would you advise police based on information
provided?
 Different from conclusions. Conclusions summarise what
you have just said. Practical considerations refer to what
you would recommend the police do in light of this
information
Conclusion and Recommendation
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Declaration

At the end of the report you need to include the following
paragraph before providing a signature and date.
‘I confirm that insofar as the facts stated in my report are within
my own knowledge I have made clear that they are and I believe
them to be true, and that the opinions I have expressed
represent my true and complete professional opinion.’
Signed:...............................................Dated:............................
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Structuring Your Report

 All materials cited in the report must be

Key components:
referenced appropriately
 For the main body of the report, please use
footnotes rather than writing out the citation in
brackets as you would do in an academic essay.
 Citation and reference lists must conform with
APA style (7th Edition)
 Consult Psychology librarian for APA guide if
Reference unsure
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Word Count

WORD COUNT: 3, 000 words.

This DOES NOT include the title page, instructions, declaration and reference list
and;
…Appendices (if you choose to include one).

It does include: footnote references in main body of report

Can choose how to use this, but please note majority will be centred around main
body of report.
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Session Summary

Lecture: General tips

Seminars: Look at previous examples / time to prep
Materials for the case report covered in subsequent
lectures Example
assessments
will be made
available on
Blackboard
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Reminder
For all assessment related
questions

Exit slips Blackboard Padlet

https://padlet.com/tochukwuoc/risk
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