The Strengths / Structured Assessment for Youth (S/SAY): The other side of the risk evaluation

Two instruments are generally used to measure protective factors in justice-involved youth: SAVRY and SAPROF-YV. Although these instruments have good psychometric properties, they only measure positive aspects in the youth's life that have a protective effect at the time of assessment. Strengths, on the other hand, may be present but not mobilized (Ward, 2017) and may not have a protective effect at the time of assessment (Serin et al., 2016). Instruments measuring protective factors measure only one facet of the positive aspects in the lives of youth. Our goal is to present the psychometric properties of the first instrument that measures strengths in justice-involved youth: The Strengths / Structured Assessment for Youth (S/SAY). The results, obtained from a sample of 92 justice-involved youths assessed at the beginning of their treatment in Quebec (Canada), suggest good internal consistency for the domains and excellent divergence validity with the YLS/CMI. With a sub-sample of 40 youths, good to excellent interrater agreement and good convergence validity with the SAPROF-YV were obtained. These first results are encouraging and will be improved with a Belgian sample. We will conclude by putting these results in perspective with the reliability and validity of the SAVRY and the SAPROF-YV.