The IAT is part of a somewhat widely used assessment of sex offenders, the Able Assessment, and is less invasive than penile plethysmography (ref1). Unfortunately, IATs have been shown to be unhelpful for identifying female child sex offenders, as their cognitive approach to offending is different from that of men (‘I was coerced by a man/lonely and horny’ vs ‘entitled and attracted to the bodies of children’) (ref2).
There is likely a false positive rate for an IAT, enough that it is relegated to the realm of polygraphy, and inadmissible in court...but I am not particularly concerned, as it is likely not large enough to render the test worse than random, and for a community like this, given that no additional discrimination will be applied beyond ‘please live somewhere else’, males in this specific, vulnerable community should be fine with submitting to an IAT. Given the ‘male coercion’ factor in female sex offenders, denying access to men who ‘fail’ the IAT would probably reduce the liklihood of female offending as well.
The reproducibility crisis is real, and most psychometric tests are lousy for a number of reasons, but it is possible to extract data that is useful, though not perfect, for making decisions. This is not a fire-and-forget solution to the problem, but in concert with normal behavior intended to reduce harm, it will hopefully help prevent the ‘Rationalist Baugruppe’ from devolving into a ‘Rationalist Pitcairn Island’
This isn’t something I find sufficiently compelling to spend a lot of time on.
But I note that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abel_Assessment does not seem particularly reassuring. I note that your first reference does not mention the IAT under that name, and from skimming doesn’t appear to talk about it under a different name. I note that the IAT not working on women is consistent with the IAT simply failing to replicate. And I note that
The reproducibility crisis is real, and most psychometric tests are lousy for a number of reasons, but it is possible to extract data that is useful, though not perfect, for making decisions.
Sounds semantically similar to “a lot of things are failing to replicate, but I think this thing works anyway”.
The IAT is part of a somewhat widely used assessment of sex offenders, the Able Assessment, and is less invasive than penile plethysmography (ref1). Unfortunately, IATs have been shown to be unhelpful for identifying female child sex offenders, as their cognitive approach to offending is different from that of men (‘I was coerced by a man/lonely and horny’ vs ‘entitled and attracted to the bodies of children’) (ref2).
There is likely a false positive rate for an IAT, enough that it is relegated to the realm of polygraphy, and inadmissible in court...but I am not particularly concerned, as it is likely not large enough to render the test worse than random, and for a community like this, given that no additional discrimination will be applied beyond ‘please live somewhere else’, males in this specific, vulnerable community should be fine with submitting to an IAT. Given the ‘male coercion’ factor in female sex offenders, denying access to men who ‘fail’ the IAT would probably reduce the liklihood of female offending as well.
The reproducibility crisis is real, and most psychometric tests are lousy for a number of reasons, but it is possible to extract data that is useful, though not perfect, for making decisions. This is not a fire-and-forget solution to the problem, but in concert with normal behavior intended to reduce harm, it will hopefully help prevent the ‘Rationalist Baugruppe’ from devolving into a ‘Rationalist Pitcairn Island’
Assessment survey: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2993520/ Survey on women: https://beta.bps.org.uk/news-and-policy/developing-assessment-and-treatment-practices-female-sexual-offenders
This isn’t something I find sufficiently compelling to spend a lot of time on.
But I note that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abel_Assessment does not seem particularly reassuring. I note that your first reference does not mention the IAT under that name, and from skimming doesn’t appear to talk about it under a different name. I note that the IAT not working on women is consistent with the IAT simply failing to replicate. And I note that
Sounds semantically similar to “a lot of things are failing to replicate, but I think this thing works anyway”.
So I remain unconvinced.