Cross-Validation of the German Version of the Revised Screening Scale for Pedophilic Interests (SSPI-2)

Pedophilic interests are considered as one of the most important diagnostic aspects and one of the strongest predictors of sexual recidivism among persons convicted of sexual offenses against children. The <i>Revised Screening Scale for Pedophilic Interests</i> (SSPI-2) is a comparatively easy-to-score diagnostic actuarial instrument to assess pedohebephilic interests. The present study aimed to examine the convergent, predictive, and incremental validity of the German version of the SSPI-2 in a sample of <i>N</i> = 438 males released from the Austrian prison system who had been convicted and incarcerated because of sexual offenses against children. As expected, the SSPI-2 was moderately correlated with a diagnosis of (exclusive) pedophilia and with the risk assessment instruments Static-99 and Sexual Violence Risk-20 (SVR-20) v2. The examination of the predictive validity revealed moderate effect sizes of the SSPI-2 for the prediction of sexually motivated recidivism. Sequential Cox regressions showed that the SSPI-2 incrementally predicts sexual recidivism and sexual noncontact recidivism beyond the SVR-20 v2 and the diagnosis of exclusive pedophilia; however, the SSPI-2 did not have incremental predictive validity beyond the Static-99. Finally, normative data were constructed for the observed and calculated proportions of pedophilia and exclusive pedophilia diagnoses and for 5-year sexual recidivism rates.