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The assessment of risk of recidivism in sexual offenders is fundamental to clinical practice. It is widely accepted that, compared with actuarial measures of risk, unaided clinical judgment has generally been found to be of low reliability. Consequently, the literature has shown a surge in actuarial measures. However, a major difficulty in assessing risk in sex offenders is the low base rate, leading to an increased likelihood of making a false positive predictive error. To overcome this, risk assessment studies are increasingly using the receiver operating characteristic (ROC), which displays the relationship between level of risk and decision choice. This note summarises the methodological issues in measuring predictive accuracy in assessing risk of re‐offending in sexual offenders, and identifies from the literature both static and dynamic risk factors associated with sexual offence recidivism.

The paper aims to provide methodological support for hybrid project management, in which the discipline of predictive methodologies combines with the flexibility of adaptive ones. Specifically, the paper explores the extent complexity and volatility dimensions of organisational problems inform choices of PM methodologies both theoretically and in current practice, as a first step towards better methodological support for hybridisation.

The paper takes a mixed method approach, including both secondary research and primary research with practitioners. Primary research consists of a small scale survey (n = 31) followed by semi-structured interviews, with findings triangulated against secondary evidence.

The paper provides empirical insights on how complexity and volatility of organisational problems can inform hybrid project management practices. Specifically, it suggests a mapping between volatility and complexity dimensions and predictive and adaptive risk controls as a first step towards the systematisation of hybrid combinations in projects.

Due to the small participant sample, the research results may lack generalisability.

The paper includes implications for the development of methodological support for setting up hybrid projects in practice.

The paper addresses a gap acknowledged both in the literature and by practitioners.

Sex Offenders with a Major Mental Illness (SOMMI) are doubly stigmatized, as these individuals are members of two highly marginalized social groups (Guidry and Saleh, 2004). Within each of these groups SOMMI only represent a small minority. For professionals seeking to base their practice in empirical research this has led to a significant problem since the literature related specifically to this group is both limited and hard to locate. Additionally, intensity of psychological risk factors varies as a function of psychiatric decompensation for some SOMMI making it hard to apply certain procedures that work with ordinary sexual offenders. The purpose of this paper is to provide a review of the relevant literature and recommendations for clinical practice that are responsive to the particular challenges posed by this unusual group of sexual offenders.

The current paper provides a review of literature on risk factors for sexual recidivism and validity of current risk tools as it pertains to SOMMI. Recommendations for risk assessment with SOMMI are provided.

The static actuarial tools appear to be useful with SOMMI. However, risk assessments measuring dynamic risk factors have poorer predictive validity. Additional factors that will need to be considered involve a possible higher recidivism rate for SOMMI and a variable relationship between major mental illness and sex offending with it sometimes predisposing, sometimes exacerbating existing risk factors, and sometimes mitigating risk.

There is a paucity of research and guidance in assessment and risk management of SOMMI. The current paper is the first to thoroughly explore the efficacy of current sex offender risk assessment tools with SOMMI and provide structured guidance for making decisions about risk and risk management needs for this challenging population.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between general market demands and consumption levels of professional sport consumers. This study was accomplished through: (a) validating the theoretical constructs of general market demand variables by conducting a confirmatory factor analysis, (b) examining the predictability of general market demand factors to consumption levels of live and televised sporting events, and (c) investigating the relationships between sociodemographic and general market demand factors. Five hundred and twenty-five residents of a major southern US city were interviewed using a questionnaire that included eight sociodemographic variables, 12 market demand variables under three factors (Game Attractiveness, Economic Consideration, and Marketing Promotion), and 10 professional sporting event consumption variables. The factor structure of the general market demand variables was confirmed. Regression analyses revealed that market demand factors were positively (p < .05) predictive of professional sport consumption. Sociodemographic variables were significantly (p < .05) related to the market demand factors. The findings imply that professional sport teams should highlight the market demand variables and adopt differential marketing procedures for various sociodemographic segments in their marketing practice.

Public–private partnerships (PPPs) are viewed as a reform tool for resolving inefficiency and absence of dynamism in water supply delivery in developing countries. However, the requirements for their successful implementation have received very little attention. This paper aims to describe a set of critical success factors (CSFs) that, when given special and continual attention, would ensure a successful project implementation and to provide a predictive tool to aid implementers to evaluate the likelihood of a successful PPP water supply project.

Fourteen perceived CSFs were initially derived from project cases and extant literature, and verified through a two-round Delphi survey. Factor analysis established five critical success factor groups (CSFGs) that were then used to develop a fuzzy synthetic evaluation tool for assessing the chance of a successful project.

The five key CSFGs are commitment of partners, strength of consortium, asset quality and social support, political environment, and national PPP unit. The model output showed that, overall, these factors have a “very high” positive impact on a successful implementation of a water supply project. Hence, there is an excellent correlation between achievement of the CSFGs and project success. Success indices of individual principal factors are also “very high”.

The study presents a tool to public clients and private audience, and it is hoped that the study will trigger policy development towards PPP practice in developing countries, because these findings have wider implications for legal and regulatory systems, public capacity, financing, public procurement and politics.

The purpose of this paper is to explain and empirically test the dependence of organizational processes related to knowledge on the nature of assumptions operating in processes of human resource management (HRM) in organizations. It concentrates on practices related to training, career development and retention.

This empirical study as a quantitative nature and the sample is made up of 5,306 collaborators in 634 organizations belonging to an economic group in the banking sub-sector. Data were collected through two questionnaires: human resource management practices questionnaire and knowledge management questionnaire – short form. The model was tested by applying univariate and multivariate multiple regression analyses.

Findings provide support for the proposed model and show the predictive capacity of the HRM practices regarding knowledge management (KM) processes, revealing a strong direct relationship between the two constructs. It stands out that the people management practices adopted from an organic and valued perspective possess a particular and distinctive capacity to predict and impact positively on KM processes.

The findings may be used by human resources and KM practitioners interested in the development of organizational knowledge through human resource practices.

The main contribution of this study is to confirm the close relationship of dependency between organizational management processes regarding people and knowledge, showing the positive effect of best practices of HRM on KM processes, as opposed to traditional or transactional practices.

This study examined the ability of the HCR‐20 Scale (version 2) to predict incidents of in‐patient violence during a stay on a medium secure ward. The study was carried out retrospectively on a sample of 94 admissions, using reports pre‐existing at the time of admission and nursing observations of behaviour in the two weeks that followed admission. The sample group was made up of mentally disordered offenders and patients with challenging behaviour. Their episodes of care averaged two years.The H and C scores, singly or combined, did not show powerful predictive capacity for the sample as a whole, which had a high base rate for violence. Insufficient variance and poor inter‐rater reliability precluded use of the R variable. For purposes of analysis, violent patients were also grouped on the number of incidents committed during their episode of care. Here the C Scale items showed strong predictive capacity for patients with more than 10 incidents during their stay. The paper argues that the latter finding supports a method of predicting admissions at risk of frequent incidents of violence.

The classification of criminal acts as violent or nonviolent should be a keystone of actuarial predictors of violent recidivism, as it affects their outcome measure and scoring of criminal history, thus influencing many decisions about sentencing, release and treatment allocation. Examination of existing actuarial and clinical violence risk assessment tools and research studies reveals considerable variation in the classifications used. This paper aims to use large samples to develop an alternative, empirically grounded classification that can be used to improve actuarial predictive scores within the offender assessment system (OASys), the tool used by the National Offender Management Service of England and Wales to assess static and dynamic risk.

Two analytical steps are implemented. First, to identify offences that frequently involve violent acts, 230,334 OASys cases are analyzed for indicators of violent content. Second, the ability of dynamic and static risk factors to predict reoffending for various offence types is investigated, analyzing 26,619 OASys cases that have official recidivism data.

The resulting empirical classification of violent offences adds public order, criminal damage, threats/harassment, robbery/aggravated burglary and weapon possession offences to the central group of homicide and assault offences. The need to assess risk of sexual recidivism separately is discussed.

This study has successfully produced an offence classification for use in a new predictor of violent recidivism. The use of empirical methods to select these offences helps to maximise predictive validity.

A repeated measures cohort study was conducted to investigate the impact of attending a day treatment programme on physical and psychological state, and to assess which baseline factors predicted level of recovery. Physical and psychological outcomes of treatment were analysed for 116 patients admitted to the treatment programme between 1996 and 2006 and were found to be in line with previous day care evaluations, with the majority of patients showing improvements on all measures. A multiple regression analysis revealed several factors to be predictive of treatment outcomes including patient demographics, comorbidities and traumatic life events. In particular, those patients who benefited most from the treatment had a lower body mass index at admission, stayed longer at the unit, were older, less likely to have other physical and psychiatric comorbidities, particularly obsessive compulsive disorder or a history of sexual abuse, and whose most predominant eating disorder problem was characterised by low weight.

This study aims to determine the factors influencing caregivers' uncertainty about children undergoing cardiac surgery in a tertiary hospital in Bangkok, Thailand.

A correlational predictive study was conducted among 75 caregivers of children from infancy to fifteen years old who were undergoing first time cardiac surgery in a tertiary hospital in Bangkok, Thailand. Four questionnaires were inquired to evaluate caregivers' uncertainty about the illness, and influential factors included (1) perception of the severity of the illness, (2) credible authority of health-care providers and (3) information and emotional support. The descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation coefficient and multiple regression analysis were used to analyze the data and influential factors.

The significant influential factors affecting caregivers' uncertainty were (1) perception of the severity of the illness (β = 0.413, p < 0.001), (2) credible authority of health-care providers (β = −0.287, p = 0.004) and (3) information and emotional support (β = −0.223, p = 0.026), and their explanation power was about 33.9 % (R² = 0.339, F = 13.630, p < 0.001).

A limitation of this study was that the researcher selected the sample group by convenient sampling and only caregivers of children who underwent cardiac surgery in Siriraj hospital were selected. Therefore, the sample group might have lacked variety and was not a good representative of the population. Future studies should be conducted by varying the setting and using randomized sampling.

This study provides clear recommendations to assess the perception of the severity of the illness by caregivers, build credibility and trust by providing quality care and should develop information and emotional support interventions for reducing the levels of caregivers' uncertainty of children undergoing cardiac surgery.

Health-care providers should develop the appropriate intervention for reducing caregivers' uncertainty by assessing the perception of the severity of the illness, providing information and emotional support and building trust for the caregivers of the children who are undergoing cardiac surgery.