Intimate Partner Violence Risk Assessment Validation Study: The RAVE Study - Summary and Recommendations: Validation of Tools for Assessing Risk from Violent Intimate Partners

The central purpose of this study was to assess the accuracy of several different approaches to predicting risk of future harm or lethality in domestic violence cases. Four methods were tested: Danger Assessment (DA), DV-MOSAIC, Domestic Violence Screening Instrument (DVSI), and Kingston Screening Instrument for Domestic Violence (K-SID). While the systematic risk assessment approaches were shown to be better than chance and improved on the victim’s own predictions, they are far from being perfectly accurate, and the study did not address whether any of the methods are better than experienced practitioners. The bottom line purpose for all risk assessment for practitioners is prevention. The risk assessment should be used as a guide to develop effective interventions to be implemented by the system and/or by the victim.