Intimate Partner Physical Injury Risk Assessment in a Military Sample

Objectives: This paper describes the development of an actuarial risk assessment instrument (the Intimate Partner Physical Injury-Risk Assessment Tool; IPPI-RAT) designed to be used by military providers to assess the likelihood that an individual who has had an alleged incident of intimate partner violence (IPV) will have a subsequent incident resulting in a physical injury to the victim. Method: Providers used a 58-item structured risk assessment tool to assess individuals with alleged IPV incidents (N 199). Across a 6-month period, alleged victims were asked to call an automated telephone system to report subsequent incidents of IPV and physical injury (N 1,082 calls). An item analysis was used to select the items that significantly differentiated the “physical injury” group from the “other” group (i.e., comparison group). Results: Fifteen items from the 58-item tool significantly predicted future physical injury and were used to create a 15-item IPPI-RAT scale. The area under the curve (Area Under the Receiver Operator Curve, AUC) value for the tool was .78, 95% CI [.71, .86]. This AUC value indicates there is a 78% chance that a randomly selected member of the physical injury group would have a higher risk score than a randomly selected member of the “other” (i.e., comparison) group. Conclusions: Findings support the tool’s utility for assessing risk for future physical injury as part of a comprehensive IPV risk assessment in reported IPV incidents in the military.