Evaluating the Ontario Domestic Assault Risk Assessment in an Australian Frontline Police Setting

Abstract

This article describes a prospective validation of the Ontario Domestic Assault Risk Assessment (ODARA) in an Australian sample of 854 family violence cases presenting to police over a 5-month period in 2015. Two hundred cases met inclusion criteria for administration of the ODARA (male-to-female intimate partner violence with a history of assault and cohabitation). The ODARA performed well in predicting further intimate partner physical assault (area under the curve [AUC] = .68), and in predicting the outcome of any further police contact for nonphysical intimate partner abuse (AUC = .72). Despite these positive results, the instrument’s restrictive inclusion criteria meant that it could be appropriately applied in only 23% of family violence cases reported to police during the data collection period, limiting its practicality in this setting.