Do risk measure scores and diagnoses predict evaluator opinions in sexually violent predator cases? It depends on the evaluator.

Field research increasingly reveals that forensic evaluators are not interchangeable. Instead, they tend to differ in their patterns of forensic opinions, in ways that likely reflect something about themselves, not just the persons evaluated. This study used data from sexually violent predator (SVP) evaluations to examine whether evaluator differences in making intermediate decisions (e.g., instrument scoring, assigning diagnoses) might explain their different patterns of final opinions.