The WAVR-21 – Workplace Assessment of Violence Risk – is a 21-item coded instrument for the structured assessment of workplace targeted violence risk. Workplace targeted or intended violence came to notoriety in the 1980’s. “Warning signs” are widely understood and texts available on threat management. Yet the field would benefit from a detailed and comprehensive assessment tool that reflects the nature and challenges of managing cases in workplace contexts.

          The WAVR-21 is designed to facilitate the corporate or workplace threat management process in two important ways. Primarily, the WAVR-21 is an instrument intended to help qualified clinical, forensic, and law enforcement risk assessment specialists (referred to as “Professional Users”) to evaluate the existence, level, and nature of threat posed by employees, former employees, or others to the workplace. Through its comprehensive Coding Grid, Worksheet, and the accompanying manual with its detailed definitions of the risk factor items, the WAVR-21 guides the Professional User in collecting and organizing data, and ultimately in evaluating a perceived risk to the workplace. In its most important aspect, the WAVR-21 acts as an assessment tool for the Professional User.

         As a secondary purpose, the WAVR-21 also helps members of management – typically Human Resources, Security, and/or Legal personnel – who become involved in the threat management process (referred to as “Corporate Users”). Through its Intake and Information Form and its Short Form, the WAVR-21 orients the Corporate User to information it will need to gather to assist the threat management process. The Short Form is a tool for quickly identifying and prioritizing data in threat cases. It consists of twelve risk parameters arranged in an order to form the acronym “Violence Risk”, and is free of any clinical or diagnostic language. The Short Form parameters are described in ways that emphasize observation of the subject’s behaviors and statements, and important workplace situational factors. In this way the WAVR-21 helps the Corporate User to expeditiously gather and organize important data that the threat assessment specialist will then use to evaluate risk. The WAVR-21 manual is written in an accessible style, with Corporate Users in mind, that they may gain a fundamental understanding of workplace violence risk. In its secondary aspect, then, the WAVR-21 “tool kit” acts to facilitate work between Corporate and Professional Users and assists the threat management process overall.

         The items of the WAVR-21 reflect the static and dynamic risk factors known to predict workplace targeted or intended violence, with its emphasis on the notion of an escalating “pathway to violence”. The item domains include psychological, behavioral, historical, and situational factors associated with workplace violence, including intimate partner violence posing a threat to the workplace. In practice, threat assessment and threat management are intertwined. Dynamic risk factors become the focus of ongoing interventions intended to reduce risk. Assessment and monitoring are ongoing, and an individual’s response to various interventions (e.g., escalation, de-escalation, or no apparent change) become part of the evolving opinion of risk level.

         The WAVR-21 is not a psychological test or scale, and does not generate a quantitative “score.” However, its construction reflects the growing trend in risk assessment technology toward more transparent “structured professional judgments” (SPJ) of violence risk in differing contexts. Practitioners using this approach refer to a checklist of factors, each of which has some form of coding criteria with a demonstrated relationship to violent behavior. Other structured guides exist to assess the violence risk associated with psychopathy, spousal abuse, released violent offenders, sex offenders, and discharged mental patients.

         The benefits of the WAVR-21 – scientifically-grounded assessment technology, an educational resource, and improved communication among the multi-disciplinary members of incident management teams – are intended to improve the quality of threat management decision-making. First published in 2007, the 2010 second edition is now available. The WAVR-21 tool kit in electronic form - the "eWAVR" - is now available. Contact Dr. Stephen White to schedule a demonstration.