Test Review: Adolescent and Child Urgent Threat Evaluation

Abstract

Recent occurrences of violence on high school and college campuses have led to increased interest among education professionals, parents, students, and community leaders in the identification of potentially violent students. Many school districts have implemented school-wide violence prevention plans to meet the safety needs of their students, and test developers have recognized the need for objective instruments to facilitate the identification of student's at risk for violence. Relevant tests usually assess the extent to which a student's collection of risk factors deviates as compared to the general population or to various clinical or diagnostic groups.One such instrument is the recently developed Adolescent and Child Urgent Threat Evaluation (ACUTE; Copelan & Ashley, 2005).