The Diagnostic Reliability of Sexual Sadism

Previous studies have reported low diagnostic agreement on the paraphilias, especially sexual sadism. In the present study, 34 evaluators throughout the United States reviewed summaries of 12 committed sex offenders. The evaluators agreed more than 90% of the time on whether offenders met criteria for any paraphilia in general and sexual sadism in particular. The authors attribute the low reliability reported in previous studies to different agreement indices, the amount and quality of information available to evaluators, and the prevalence of the respective paraphilic diagnoses in their samples.