Prospective Field Validation of the START:AV in a Dutch Secure Youth Care Sample

The Short-Term Assessment of Risk and Treatability: Adolescent Version (START:AV) is a risk assessment instrument for adolescents that estimates the risk of multiple adverse outcomes. Prior research into its predictive validity is limited to a handful of studies conducted with the START:AV pilot version and often by the instrument’s developers. The present study examines the START:AV’s field validity in a secure youth care sample in the Netherlands. Using a prospective design, we investigated whether the total scores, lifetime history, and the final risk judgments of 106 START:AVs predicted inpatient incidents during a 4-month follow-up. Final risk judgments and lifetime history predicted multiple adverse outcomes, including physical aggression, institutional violations, substance use, self-injury, and victimization. The predictive validity of the total scores was significant only for physical aggression and institutional violations. Hence, the short-term predictive validity of the START:AV for inpatient incidents in a residential youth care setting was partially demonstrated and the START:AV final risk judgments can be used to guide treatment planning and decision-making regarding furlough or discharge in this setting.

Explaining Chinese Reactions to COVID-19 During the Outbreak: A Systematic Illustration

Objective: This research attempts to explore systematically factors that influence public reactions during COVID-19 pandemic, including different measures of risk perceptions, public trust in different levels of governments, and attention to news.Methods: This research uses a national stratified random sample of Chinese population and multiple linear regressions to explore the potential predictors of public reactions to coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19).Results: This research found that the effects of attentions to news, provincial experience, trust in government, demographics, and political cultures on risk perceptions depend on measures of risk perceptions, risk judgments vs. cognitive vs. affective risk perceptions. Moreover, the effect of culture on trust in government is consistent across different levels of government, trust in local, provincial, and central governments; living in the epicenter of COVID-19 in China decreases trust in local/provincial government but not trust in central government; public attention to news can bring both positive (trust in government) and negative (negative affect) outcomes. Finally, it confirmed positive associations among risk perception, subjective knowledge, and attention to news.Conclusion: The findings suggest challenges for risk communication.

The causal impact of objective numeracy on judgments: Improving numeracy via symbolic and non-symbolic approximate arithmetic training yields more consistent risk judgments

Park and Brannon (2013, https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797613482944) found that practicing non-symbolic approximate arithmetic increased performance on an objective numeracy task, specifically symbolic arithmetic. Manipulating objective numeracy would be useful for many researchers, particularly those who wish to investigate causal effects of objective numeracy on performance. Objective numeracy has been linked to performance in multiple areas, such as judgment-and-decision-making (JDM) competence, but most existing studies are correlational. Here, we expanded upon Park and Brannon’s method to experimentally manipulate objective numeracy and we investigated whether numeracy’s link with JDM performance was causal. Experimental participants drawn from a diverse internet sample trained on approximate-arithmetic tasks whereas active control participants trained on a spatial working-memory task. Numeracy training followed a 2 × 2 design: Experimental participants quickly estimated the sum of OR difference between presented numeric stimuli, using symbolic numbers (i.e., Arabic numbers) OR non-symbolic numeric stimuli (i.e., dot arrays). We partially replicated Park and Brannon’s findings: The numeracy training improved objective-numeracy performance more than control training, but this improvement was evidenced by performance on the Objective Numeracy Scale, not the symbolic arithmetic task. Subsequently, we found that experimental participants also perceived risks more consistently than active control participants, and this risk-consistency benefit was mediated by objective numeracy. These results provide the first known experimental evidence of a causal link between objective numeracy and the consistency of risk judgments.

Expert’s Heuristic Biases in Airport Predictive Risk Assessments

Expert perceptions have been increasingly used to perform risk assessments in airport predictive risk assessments in recent years. Although it is known that biases are less influential in groups of experts when compared to laypeople, they still can be residually present in such tasks with this specific group. Therefore, this article aims to propose (1) the pragmatic organization of knowledge about the biases that may affect airport risk assessments by groups of experts and (2) which of them most often arise in this type of analysis and at what intensity. For the development of the work, we carried out a dense bibliographic review of the theme. Later, we performed a predictive risk assessment and a survey, with the support of an experienced group of 30 experts from Brazilian regulatory agency and airport operators. After 1224 risk judgments, experts were able to clearly indicate regulations and their sections that are disproportionately more and less important in terms of risk, leading States to a better regulatory quality only by changing their logic of actions to a risk-based approach. Later the group answered a survey on a list of 12 heuristic biases created from the bibliographic review. Results showed that, in fact experts have a resistance to biases influence, mainly based in their academic and professional background, but also showed this influence is not exactly negligible. It was also possible to rank the heuristic biases in terms of importance and indicate that experts tend to concern with three hierarchical information characteristics when judging risk: at first, would be the form in which risk problems are presented; second, how they interpret information presented; and third, the amount of information presented.

Fair value accounting from the users’ perspective: an experiment on how financial analysts rely on fair value estimates in their decisions

Purpose The current paper aims to understand whether fair value accounting (FVA) affects analysts’ loan approval decisions and default risk judgments. Design/methodology/approach This study focusses on three issues: unrealized gain or loss resulting from FV measurement recognized in other comprehensive income (OCI), recognition of assets at FV or historical cost and the disclosure or non-disclosure of the FV of collateral assets. It uses an experiment carried out with a sample of 29 CFA analysts. Findings The results show that all three issues have a significant effect on analysts’ judgment and decision-making in processing FV estimates. Originality/value The paper extends knowledge on how financial analysts perceive FV estimates and disclosure and may help the accounting standard boards assess the challenges facing analysts when they apply professional judgments in interpreting FV measurements and disclosures. Moreover, it offers fresh views to the debate on the decision usefulness of FVA, particularly relevant in the post-implementation review of IFRS 13.

Confidence in complex risk judgments: the roles of uncertainty, experience, and affect

Disagreement persists about the origin of confidence and the internal signals that influence its formation. Using combined individual participant data from four studies (N = 181), we examined confidence in relation to the perceived source of uncertainty for a risk judgment and explored the roles of domain-specific experience and affective evaluations in the formation of confidence. In each study, participants with domain-specific experience (backcountry skiers) performed complex risk judgments (judging avalanche risk) for multiple highly uncertain contexts (hypothetical scenarios in avalanche terrain). We examined whether more experienced participants could better recognize the inherent uncertainty of the decision environment, and if they did so with greater confidence. For complex tasks such as judging avalanche risk, experience should increase a person’s understanding of the probabilistic, unpredictable nature of that environment. Yet our findings suggests that participants of all levels of experience attributed uncertainty to their own judgment process rather than to the limitations and inherent uncertainty of the environment. We also examined whether participants’ affective evaluations influenced confidence in their risk judgments. Affective evaluations are understood to play a crucial orienting role in the risk judgment process. We found evidence of an interplay between affective and cognitive judgments in the formation of confidence. Participants were more confident when their affective evaluation matched their risk judgment, and less confident when there was a mismatch between the two. Our research illustrates a troubling limitation in the development of confidence with experience and the potential (dis)advantageous effect of affective evaluations on confidence in certain contexts.

Determining the Inherent Risks of Cryptocurrency: A Survey Analysis

Cryptocurrencies pose several risks that impact the inherent risk assessments of auditors. The SEC has issued warnings about the risks (Clayton 2017), and the PCAOB lists virtual assets as a key focus area in future inspections (Vincent and Wilkins 2020). This study examines how accounting professionals perceive the inherent risks associated with cryptocurrency based on their likelihood of occurrence and expected impact on financial statements. We find the risk of determining cryptocurrency value is perceived as having the highest likelihood of occurrence, and unauthorized private key access has the highest impact. Combining the evaluations of likelihood and impact, we rank the risk of ineffective exchange-level controls as having the highest inherent risk. We also find that inherent risk judgments are negatively correlated with cryptocurrency experience. Professionals with prior cryptocurrency experience, or who work for a company planning to process cryptocurrency transactions, rate inherent risk lower than those with less experience.

Police are Influenced by Anchoring and Risk When Allocating Resources for Scenario-based Intimate Partner Violence Cases

Sixty-six police officers were given four intimate partner violence (IPV) scenarios to rate for risk of future violence. At the start of the experiment, participants were provided with either a low-risk or high-risk “anchor” scenario of police attending an IPV incident. Next, participants were given three counterbalanced scenarios: high, medium, and low risk. Half the participants were given a structured professional judgment tool to guide their decisions. Participants given the low-risk anchor rated the following scenarios as being of greater risk than those given the high-risk anchor. Participants were consistent in identifying high-, medium-, and low-risk scenarios and the tool made no difference to these ratings. Participants were more confident in their higher risk judgments than their lower risk judgments. Officers distributed a disproportionately high amount of resources to the high-risk offenders and the results suggest that police officers can make decisions consistent with Risk-Need-Responsivity principles. However, anchoring effects and working in a context where violence is more severe and frequent has the potential to bias perceptions and make officers less sensitive to risk.

The effect of attitudes towards individuals with sexual convictions on professional and student risk judgments

Attitudes towards individuals with sexual convictions is an area with growing research interest, but the effects of such attitudes on professional judgments is largely unexplored. What is known from the existing literature is that attitudes guide the interpretation of sexual crime related information, which cascade into potential biased or heuristically driven judgments. In this study we recruited samples of both students (n = 341) and forensic professionals (n = 186) to explore whether attitudes towards individuals with sexual convictions predicted risk judgments of hypothetical sexual offense scenarios, and whether this relationship is moderated by professional status or perpetrator characteristics. Forensic professionals expressed more positive attitudes overall, but the significant effect of attitudes on risk judgments was consistent between participant groups and was not moderated by perpetrator age or sex. We suggest that relying on attitudes as a basis for risk judgments opens the door to incorrect (and potentially dangerous) decision-making and discuss our data in terms of their potential clinical implications.