Screening for risk of inpatient violence: Validation of an actuarial tool.

A screening checklist for assessing the risk of violence at the time of psychiatric hospitalization was developed. Checklist items and a cutoff point for low versus high risk of violence were selected based on a previous study of statistical prediction of violence. Application of the checklist to a new sample of 338 patients admitted to a university-based inpatient unit revealed promising results in identifying patients who later displayed aggressive behavior in the hospital, as indicated by its positive predictive value (59.0%), negative predictive value (70.6%), sensitivity (57.2%), specificity (70.0%), total predictive value (65.4%), and likelihood ratio (1.97). The results suggest the potential value of incorporating actuarial methods in the evaluation of violence risk.