Comparing Gender Differences and Similarities in How Risks and Strengths Cluster to Form Profiles of Justice-Involved Youth: A Latent Profile Analysis

The extent to which gender informed, person-centered risk assessment approaches enhance the efficacy of risk assessment and treatment planning, has not been extensively investigated. A person-centered, gender informed latent profile analysis (LPA) examined dynamic need and strength domain scores, as well as mental health scores and Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) scores derived from the Youth Assessment Screening Instrument (YASI) in a sample of 1,782 justice-involved youth. Results yielded the same three distinct profiles for both females and males: (1) low needs/high strengths, (2) moderate needs /moderate strengths, and (3) high needs/low strengths. Additional analyses examined the relationship between profile membership and the YASI Pre-Screen risk score, age, race, and predictive validity. In sum, despite small gender differences, females and males are more similar than different in terms of their treatment profiles. A gender informed, variable-centered approach is appropriate for risk assessment and treatment planning with justice-involved youth.