An Efficient Measure of Sexual Interest in Children: The Revised Screening Scale for Pedophilic Interests (SSPI-2)

This study examined the convergent, divergent, predictive, and incremental validity of the Revised Screening Scale for Pedophilic Interests (SSPI-2) in a sample of 264 men adjudicated for sexual offenses against at least one child under the age of 15. We found evidence of construct validity as the SSPI-2 had small to medium correlations with phallometric testing (<i>r</i> = .31), recorded pedohebephilic diagnoses (<i>r</i> = .52), and attitudes tolerant of sexual offending against children (<i>r</i> = .23), in addition to small and non-significant correlations with the PCL-R (<i>r</i> = -.07), VRAG-R (<i>r</i> = -.09), BARR-2002R (<i>r</i> = -.06), and conduct disorder (<i>r</i> = -.07). As indicated by DeLong tests, the SSPI-2 was a better predictor of 5-year sexual (<i>Z</i> = -2.44) and non-contact sexual recidivism (<i>Z</i> = -2.46) than the SSPI. The SSPI-2 also added incremental predictive accuracy to risk tools such as the BARR-2002R, PCL-R, VRAG-R, and Static-99R. Overall, our findings suggest that the SSPI-2 is a valid measure of sexual interest in children and may be useful as a screening tool to help inform prioritization and management.