Examining the Factor Structure of a Risk Assessment Inventory in Young Offenders: FER-R, Risk and Resource Assessment Form

Abstract

The FER-R, Risk and Resource Assessment Form, is a multidimensional inventory of structured professional judgment that assesses criminogenic risks and resources for the design and management of individualized intervention plans with criminally sanctioned adolescents. The aim of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of the FER-R, reviewing its factorial structure to contribute evidence of convergent and discriminant construct validity in a sample of adolescents sentenced for crimes in Chile. For each domain (risks and resources) with its respective facets, a unidimensional bifactor structure (CFA-BF) was obtained, with adequate indices of fit that confirmed its construct validity, while the convergent validity was demonstrated with the YLS/CMI and the divergent validity with two MACI scales. The FER-R adds factorial validity to the evidence of the previously reported predictive validity, making it a robust inventory for the evaluation of young offenders, and a relevant tool to manage differentiated interventions in Chile, with a high potential for use in Latin America. The importance of finding a suitable balance in assessing risks and protective factors is discussed, in order to manage interventions adjusted to the needs of the adolescents to promote their criminal desistance.

The transition of Chilean adolescents from the child welfare system to the adolescent justice system: a continuation or an accumulation of adverse factors?

“…A quantitative methodology was used to analyze the data collected through the Risk and Resources Evaluation Form FER-R (Alarcón, 2001) and the Inventory of Risk and Criminogenic Needs IRNC (Chesta, 2009), validated in the Chilean adolescent population (Alarcón, 2001;Alarcón et al, 2009Alarcón et al, , 2022.…”

“…It is scored by presence or absence, that is, it is a dichotomous response instrument. We chose to use this tool because several investigations conducted in Chile with the FER-R have reported adequate psychometric properties of the instrument (Alarcón, 2001;Alarcón et al, 2009Alarcón et al, , 2022. In addition, the FER-R is used by many teams working in the adolescent justice system in the country (Alarcón et al, 2012).…”