Over the past quarter-century, the Youth Assessment and Screening Instrument (YASI) has undergone significant evolution, reflecting advances in our understanding of youth behavior and the factors that influence it. This dynamic tool, designed to assess risk, needs, and protective factors in young people, has been instrumental in shaping interventions and support systems. To delve deeper into the journey of YASI, we sat down with Dr. David Robinson, a leading expert in the field. In this interview, Dr. Robinson shares his insights on the development and impact of YASI, offering a comprehensive look at how it has transformed over the years to better serve youth and their communities.
You’ve been involved in the justice assessment arena for a number of years. Tell me how it started, Dave.
Yes, it has been a little over 40 years, and that time flew by. Of course, that was several years before the Youth Assessment and Screening Instrument (YASI) came along! I landed in this field by chance. I had the good fortune of getting a job as a research assistant in Dr. Don Andrews' forensic psychology lab at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. I had just completed a Master's and was looking for work to take a break before I began doctoral studies.
When did you start that job?
Way back in 1982. Previously, I studied Sociology and had no knowledge, and really no interest at the time, in Forensic Psychology or assessment. But I got hooked very fast!
Tell me more about that.
Well, little did I know that I was about to begin an apprenticeship under the mentorship of a researcher who was gaining momentum with his new ideas on assessment and effective correctional interventions. Andrews was emerging as a giant in our field. From those early days in the late 1970s and early 80s, he and his colleagues began setting an agenda that would dominate assessment and case management for the next forty years!
Wow, that must have been an exciting time!
It truly was – I got into the field at the time Andrews and his colleagues were laying out the principles of Risk, Needs, and Responsivity. Now universally known as RNR. They were charting new territory in their efforts to present evidence against the position that “nothing works” in helping justice-involved people make positive change. This is when he invented words like “criminogenic need” and “responsivity” to help elaborate the principles. His publications and his model were gaining support all over the world, and I was lucky enough to be involved in conducting a lot of the statistical analysis that he presented in papers with colleagues like Robert Hoge, James Bonta, and Paul Gendreau. It was exciting! They were convinced, and they showed evidence that recidivism could be reduced if the principles were followed.
What about the work on juvenile risk and need assessment and the YASI?
Well, before YASI, I started working on validation studies of the LSI – the Level of Supervision Inventory – a tool that would become a standard in evidence-based practice on the adult side. Then, very quickly, we moved to develop a youth version of the LSI – the Youth Level of Service Inventory or YLS. It’s now referred to as the YLS-CMI. We quickly amassed new samples with the assessment data. There were many Psychology Honors students in Don’s lab, and I helped them collect and analyze data from local youth service agencies. It took off very quickly! The key thing is that these tools provided very relevant information for measuring both static and dynamic indicators of risk. Soon, the dynamic risk indicators were described as needed and could be used to follow the Need principle of RNR. Now, assessment has become as much associated with assessing needs as it was with assessing the simple risk of recidivism. The two were now linked – risk and needs assessment. And practitioners earnestly began learning how to develop case plans to help youth and adults change based on the assessment information.
What happened next?
For me, I continued the research work in Don’s lab while I completed my doctoral studies. In 1988, I moved on to work in adult corrections as a Research Manager at Correctional Service Canada. I was involved in research, evaluation, and adult assessment projects for about nine years there. After that, I left to enter private consulting, and luckily, I got to focus on youth assessment again.
Is that when Orbis Partners and YASI came together?
Exactly! That’s when it all began to unfold with my founding partners. We learned a great deal from pioneering work in Washington State, where a new assessment approach was being piloted. We first brought an adapted version of the Washington tool to New York State in 2000. It was exciting! It was in New York that we came up with the name Youth Assessment and Screening Instrument – or YASI.
So, YASI has been around for almost 25 years! What was unique about YASI?
Oh, there was so much that Orbis got excited about in rolling out YASI. For me, the biggest thing about YASI was the focus on strengths or protective factors. Strength was now being measured at the item level in a youth assessment tool! This was huge! People were starting to ask why strengths were not included in assessments? When people learned that YASI included strengths, we quickly grew to jurisdictions that wanted a strength-based approach and were looking for innovation in their assessments. We now have 15 state-wide implementations of YASI and hundreds of other users in counties and organizations across the country.
What about the YASI Pre-Screen?
Yes, the Pre-Screen was a concept that was part of the original Washington model. It provided a rapid and efficient method to determine the level of risk of recidivism for youth, using a minimum of items. Rather than completing a comprehensive assessment at the start, the Pre-Screen could be used to triage, screening out low-risk cases and focusing on the more extensive needs and strength assessment for moderate and high-risk cases that would need intensive case planning and service. The Pre-Screen is still used in this way by most of our YASI jurisdictions.
Where did the YASI Wheel come from?
The YASI Wheel was created when we first implemented it in New York. It was literally a case of my partners and me having lunch when we came up with the idea and drew out the wheel on a napkin! YASI is probably best known for that wheel! We got excited immediately because the wheel provided a format to show both the needs and strengths in one diagram – it was new, dynamic looking, and avoided showing the domain scores in a bar chart format. People would look at it first and have some hesitation, but when they looked a little closer, they really loved the way it worked. It took a bit of time to render the YASI Wheel in the software, but we got it working!
What about software?
Well, the software evolved in stages. We introduced YASI software at the very beginning in New York – but it was very rudimentary compared to what we have today in our CaseWorks 2.0 product. Originally, it was distributed by floppy disk, if you can believe it. Imagine bug fixes and upgrades! We gradually introduced case planning functionality into the software as well as statistical reporting so that organizations could roll up their YASI data and profile their populations. After about five or six years, we realized that we needed to use the internet and browser applications for our software – which was a huge step forward.
And the narrative report that users find so impressive?
Yes, as the technology evolved, we introduced our computer-generated narrative report – which basically produces a summary of the risk, needs, and strengths assessment findings for each domain. It wasn’t quite AI, but it was a real hit! New York asked if we could do it, and we were very proud when we delivered. It meant that probation officers could take the YASI report, put it into a Word file, and then make any necessary revisions to turn it into a pre-sentence report. Now, users make use of the narrative report for various purposes. Another recent feature we added is a validation process that scans the assessment at the data entry stage and identifies any inconsistencies from one item to another. Then the application reports inconsistencies to the user and presents the discrepant items so that they can fix any errors quickly and efficiently. This is a great feature to increase reliability and validity!
Success Planning is very critical for YASI, when did that get introduced?
From the very beginning, we knew that we wanted our youth assessment tool to emphasize case planning, which we are now calling Success Planning, as you mentioned. We wanted our software to bring case workers immediately from assessment results on the YASI Wheel to the case planning process. Most tools have some type of data entry format for specifying case plans. But we wanted our software to mimic the case planning steps we were teaching people in training: Mapping ABCD, Priorities and Targets, Goals and Action Steps.
I know that Motivational Interviewing (MI) is an important part of Orbis’ assessment and case planning model. Tell me more about that.
Yes, MI was incorporated from the start. It was used to guide the assessment interview with the youth – and, importantly – help with the case planning process. We have gotten better at it as the years went by. More and more, our language is changing to more accurately reflect an MI and strength-based approach to collaborating with youth. In fact, our model is called Collaborative Case Work. We want youth to collaborate with their case worker on conducting the assessment and building the Success Plan. Language like collaboration, Success Plan, strength-based goals, and youth (instead of offender or juvenile) are all important ways to make this link for case workers and clients. For example, we have a feedback process that is now built into the success planning module of the software to help prepare assessment information that will be shared with the youth. For youth, we also have a specially designed feedback wheel that helps put the information into the hands of the youth. We always start the feedback process by talking about the strengths – and that information comes directly from the YASI results.
Has the YASI scoring changed over the years?
Yes, but not in a big way! We made minor revisions over time, but the tool has been very robust in predicting outcomes. However, a major advance was introducing separate scoring for girls and boys to adjust for how risk is manifested for both genders. With many tools, girls are overclassified into higher risk categories than is warranted by their outcomes. So, we fixed this in our scoring so that high-risk girls and boys have the same recidivism rates. There is a special focus on gender-responsive practice within our company, and we are continuing to research how we can refine our scoring to accommodate gender differences in predictors. We are also trying to get our heads around an issue that comes up again and again: how does YASI work with non-binary youth? We’re hoping to get more data to address that question over the next few years. Another feature of YASI which we think is strong is how it handles reassessment. We put a lot of effort into designing the items and domain scoring to be more sensitive to change over time. So, in reporting results - both aggregate and for individual assessments - we’ve designed features to bring attention to the changes clients make when working with reassessment results.
What about the content of YASI? I know there are options to include additional domains.
Yes, we now have a Basic Needs domain available to measure issues like food and shelter insecurity, lack of transportation, etc. We also have a Physical Health domain to assess issues that need to be addressed in that area. Many researchers feel that it’s important to limit the scope of assessments to basic criminogenic needs. While we include the basic criminogenic needs, we feel that there are a lot of responsivity factors, like mental health and basic needs, that also need to be addressed. These may not be criminogenic per se, but they might complete our picture of how we need to help the youth in order to bring them to a point where they can address their criminogenic needs. The responsivity principle is so important, but I think we have lagged behind in addressing it when compared to risk and needs. Unless we measure some of these responsivity elements, many caseworkers will overlook such factors. Trauma is another example; we know from published research using a YASI sample that the experience of adverse childhood experiences is correlated with a variety of problems and negative outcomes. We also find that it may be predictive of negative juvenile justice outcomes for girls. So, it’s important, and we now include a YASI trauma index as a standard component in the results. While we can encourage people to consider responsivity issues, unless we provide tools to help them identify those factors, I think our assessment process will be flawed.
Has training for YASI changed?
Training has changed a lot, especially since the pandemic with the shift to Virtual Training and eLearning. But we have been able to leverage those tools very successfully! Several years ago, we developed an eTraining application to teach people to administer the YASI using a video case study. That turned out to be a very efficient way of getting people trained quickly at minimal cost without any scheduling barriers. However, we’ve now added virtual group training via Zoom to deepen users’ experience with the tool and explore the application of results to success planning with youth. We’ve divided the virtual training into 4 half days spread out over a few weeks or a month. Participants bring their own YASI case to the training, and we use assignments (with confidential individual feedback) to help them practice each step of the process, from assessment to success plan building. Having assignments and the chance to practice with cases has really made a difference! Another game-changer that is related to training has been a big investment in coaching. We have a powerful coaching package available to help selected staff serve as YASI mentors in their organizations. For example, North Carolina has over 100 certified coaches who offer coaching sessions to staff on a regular schedule. This has been a very encouraging way to support staff and increase fidelity to the model.
What’s next for YASI?
Oh wow! There’s lots! We have a new version of YASI that we are piloting in Illinois with their Redeploy project for more vulnerable youth, and it is shaping up to be very exciting. The new version is more comprehensive, introduces new language, and some new responsivity content as well. It is getting great reception so far from caseworkers and stakeholders, and I’m really looking forward to collecting data to see how the new version is working! We also have other plans in the works, of course! So, stay tuned!
David Robinson, Ph.D. is a founder of Orbis Partners and is currently the Director of Assessment and CEO. Orbis is one of six entities of the parent company, Empower Community Care. Empower includes Orbis, MST, Evidence Based Associates, the Carey Group, FFT and Incredible Years. Becca Ford is a Solutions Consultant for Empower Community Care.
Orbis Partners provides solutions for criminal justice and human services systems, specializing in designing and implementing services for at-risk client groups. Orbis' risk, needs, and strengths assessment tools are designed to guide the casework process by incorporating an individual's unique set of needs. For more information about our assessments, visit our Assessments page or contact us!