Workshop 2: The WAVR-21

Post-conference workshop #2

The WAVR-21

by Dr Stephen White (USA) 

Date: 14 & 15 November 2024

CPD Points: 16 General CEUs

Registration: 07h30

Times: 08h00-17h00

Venue: Investec Private Bank, 100 Grayston Drive, Sandton

Cost:

• Non-TAP members: ZAR6500

• TAP members: ZAR6000 

Enquiries: Prof Gerard Labuschagne doc@afatap.africa

About the workshop

The WAVR-21 – Workplace Assessment of Violence Risk – is a 21-item coded instrument for the structured assessment of workplace and campus targeted violence risk. 

First published in 2007 by its co-developers, Drs. Stephen White and Reid Meloy, the WAVR-21 reflects the authors’ extensive case and forensic experience and a thorough review of the research and clinical literature and is thus an evidence-based structured professional guideline (and not a psychological test). The WAVR is now in its third edition, published in 2016.

The revised V3 Worksheet and Grid coding forms are appropriate for use by both clinical and non-clinical professionals involved in the threat assessment and management endeavor.

Who may use the WAVR-21? The WAVR-21 may be used by the members of multidisciplinary threat assessment and management (TAM) teams who typically work in organizations, as well as by risk assessment mental health professionals who consult or conduct formal assessments in work or campus settings.

The primary focus of the WAVR-21 is to assess the risk of workplace or campus homicidal targeted violence. A term originally coined by the behavioral scientists of the US Secret Service, targeted violence refers to situations in which an individual intentionally commits an act of violence against an identified or symbolic target, whether people or places. 

Also referred to as intended violence, these acts are potentially foreseeable, as they are the result of an understandable, evolving, and often discernable process of thinking, behavior, and preparation. Several of the WAVR-21 factors incorporate this “pathway to violence” escalation dynamic.

The secondary purpose of the WAVR-21 is to assess other forms of problematic aggression. The WAVR may be used to identify and assess the risk, frequency, and severity of non-homicidal aggression such as stalking, disruptive anger problems, menacing behavior, and bullying. 

These manifestations of aggression are common and problematic in organizational settings in themselves. They could also figure into the ultimate formulation of a subject who may pose a risk of targeted homicide. This view is consistent with contemporary theories that targeted violence is continuous, contextual, and dynamic.

The WAVR-21 is among the growing number of “structured professional judgment guides” (“SPJs”). The WAVR-21 is not a psychological test or scale, and does not generate a quantitative “score.” However, the WAVR-21 exemplifies the growing trend in risk assessment technology toward using SPJs.

In this organized but non-quantitative format, responders refer to a list of factors, each with some form of coding criteria with a demonstrated relationship to violence. Such guidelines improve the consistency and transparency of assessment decision-making.

About the speaker

Stephen G. White, Ph.D. is a psychologist and the former President of Work Trauma Services Inc., a consulting group he originally founded in 1982 to assist employers with serious workplace crises. His extensive work in organizational trauma reduction led to his specializing, since 1989, in the assessment and management of workplace and campus violence risk. 

Dr. White has consulted nationally and internationally on over 4,500 threat cases for numerous Fortune 500 companies, private and public organizations, law firms and their clientele, colleges and universities, and law enforcement, military, and governmental entities. 

He has testified before the California State Legislature on behalf of workplace violence prevention legislation. Dr. White has authored or co-authored peer-reviewed publications on stalking, workplace and campus mass murder, violence risk assessment, autism and violence, and workplace trauma management.  

Dr. White, in collaboration with Dr. Reid Meloy, developed and published in 2007 The WAVR-21. Now in its third edition, the WAVR-21 is an evidence-based structured professional judgment guide for assessing workplace and campus violence risk. 

Dr. White has contributed chapters on workplace violence in the first and second editions of The International Handbook of Threat Assessment, published by Oxford University Press, and is a Contributing Editor for the Journal of Threat Assessment and Management.

He was a member of the expert panel of the 2012 US Army-sponsored Workplace Violence in the Military Program, providing peer reviews of scientific proposals to study predictors of targeted violence across Department of Defense service areas. 

In 2022 he received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Association of Threat Assessment Professionals. Dr. White has served as an Associate Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, where he co-facilitated professional development groups for medical students. 

He is a sought-after trainer and a frequent guest lecturer at regional, national, and international forums for security, human resource, and mental health professionals, campus administrators, law enforcement agencies, and employment law attorneys.