A useful understanding of the relationship between age, actuarial scores, and sexual recidivism can be obtained by comparing the entries in equivalent cells from "age-stratified" actuarial tables. This article reports the compilation of the first multisample age-stratified table of sexual recidivism rates, referred to as the "multisample age-stratified table of sexual recidivism rates (MATS-1)," from recent research on Static-99 and another actuarial known as the Automated Sexual Recidivism Scale. The MATS-1 validates the "age invariance effect" that the risk of sexual recidivism declines with advancing age and shows that age-restricted tables underestimate risk for younger offenders and overestimate risk for older offenders. Based on data from more than 9,000 sex offenders, our conclusion is that evaluators should report recidivism estimates from age-stratified tables when they are assessing sexual recidivism risk, particularly when evaluating the aging sex offender.

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Many clinical psychologists have claimed that long-term sexual recidivism rates are a fixed multiple of short-term rates and have estimated that the true value of this constant falls somewhere between 1.5 and 3.0. They have also proposed that it is "mathematically sound" for evaluators to estimate the long-term rate for any actuarial score in sexually violent predator civil commitment cases by multiplying its short-term rate by this constant. The present paper questions the "constant multiplier assumption" and summarizes disconfirming data collected by its proponents and others showing that the fixed ratios for groups with low short-term rates are actually greater than the ratios for groups with high short-term rates. These results rule out the use of the constant multiplier assumption by risk evaluators. It is concerning that this assumption has not been previously tested. The authors call on the developers of risk assessment systems to collect and report data that clearly validate the assumptions that underpin their actuarial tables before they are disseminated or administered. The American Psychological Association ethical standards also require forensic evaluators to acknowledge the limitations of their risk assessments when they testify, a practice that is invaluable to the trier of fact.

Psychiatrist and Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition (DSM-IV) text editor Michael First has criticized the addition of victim counts to criteria proposed by the Paraphilia Sub-Workgroup for inclusion in DSM-5 because they will increase false-positive diagnoses. Psychologist and Chair of the DSM-5 Paraphilia Sub-Workgroup, Ray Blanchard, responded by publishing a study of pedohebephiles and teleiophiles which seemed to show that victim counts could accurately identify pedohebephiles who were selected per self-report and phallometric testing. His analysis was flawed because it did not conform to conventional clinical practice and because he sampled groups at opposite ends of the clinical spectrum. In an analysis of his full sample, we found the false-positive rate for pedohebephilia at the recommended victim count selection points was indeed very large. Why? Because data analyses that eliminate intermediate data points will generate inflated estimates of correlation coefficients, base rates, and the discriminative capacity of predictor variables. This principle is also relevant for understanding the flaws in previous research that led Hanson and Bussiere to conclude that sexual recidivism was correlated with "sexual interest in children as measured by phallometric assessment." The credibility of mental health professionals rests on the reliability of their research. Conducting, publishing, and citing research that reflects