6533b872fe1ef96bd12d4349

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Test–Retest Reliability and Temporal Agreement of Direct and Indirect Sexual Interest Measures

Daniel TurnerAlexander F. SchmidtMartin RettenbergerRobin Welsch

subject

AdultMaleRelative reliabilityPsychometricsIntraclass correlation03 medical and health sciences0302 clinical medicineGermanyStatisticsHumansPedophiliaGeneral PsychologyReliability (statistics)Psychological Tests050901 criminology05 social sciencesReproducibility of ResultsSexual preferenceImplicit-association testCriminals030227 psychiatryTest (assessment)Psychiatry and Mental healthPedophiliaSexual interest0509 other social sciencesPsychology

description

The Explicit and Implicit Sexual Interest Profile (EISIP) is a multimethod measure of sexual interest in children and adults. It combines indirect latency-based measures such as the Implicit Association Test (IAT), Viewing Time (VT), and explicit self-report measures. This study examined test–retest reliability and absolute temporal agreement of the EISIP over a 2-week interval in persons who were convicted of sexual offenses against children ( n = 33) and nonoffending controls ( n = 48). Test–retest reliability of the aggregated EISIP measures was high across the whole sample ( rtt = .90, intraclass correlation coefficient [ICC] = .90) with the IAT yielding the lowest retest correlations ( rtt = .66, ICC = .66). However, these indicators of relative reliability only quantify the temporal stability of individual differences within the group, not the detectability of individual change. Absolute temporal agreement as assessed via Bland–Altman plots ranged from one fourth to three thirds of a standardized unit in the sexual preference scores. This implies that individual change has to exceed medium to large standardized effect sizes to be distinguishable from spontaneous temporal variation in the EISIP measures. Overall, scores of combined measures were largely superior to single measures in terms of both absolute and relative reliability.

https://doi.org/10.1177/1079063220904354