WAVR-21
Definition
Workplace Assessment of Violence Risk, 21-factor version. A structured threat-assessment tool used in occupational and institutional settings that integrates language analysis with behavioural history, mental state, and proximity to means.
- Full name
- Workplace Assessment of Violence Risk
- Items
- 21
- Developers
- White and Meloy
- Method
- Structured professional judgment (SPJ)
- Setting
- Occupationally-motivated targeted violence
Common questions
How does WAVR-21's SPJ format differ from a purely actuarial tool like VRAG-R?+
Rather than producing a fixed numeric probability, WAVR-21 guides an evaluator through a structured checklist of risk and stabilizing factors and requires them to integrate that information into a professional judgment of risk level and management priorities.
What kinds of factors does WAVR-21 assess beyond a person's history of violence?+
It examines grievance and motive, access to weapons, situational and organizational stressors, mental state indicators, and target selection or proximity to intended victims, reflecting that workplace violence risk depends heavily on current context, not only past behavior.
Related terms
- BNS 2023 § 113
- The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita 2023 terrorist act provision (replacing UAPA § 15 as the primary substantive offence for many terrorism prosecutions); does...
- BTAC (Behavioral Threat Assessment Center)
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- Channel Programme
- The UK's statutory civil intervention pathway for individuals assessed as vulnerable to radicalisation; operated through multi-agency Channel panels, placed on statutory footing...
- Conditional Threat
- A threat whose harm is contingent on a specified triggering event or the recipient's behaviour. 'If you go to the police, you...
- Direct vs Indirect Threat
- A direct threat explicitly names the harm, the sender, and the target. An indirect threat achieves the same communicative effect through implication,...
- ERPO (Extreme Risk Protection Order)
- A US civil-law mechanism (enacted in 21 states as of 2025) allowing courts to temporarily remove firearms from persons assessed as an...
- Expressive Anger
- Language that vents strong negative emotion using threat vocabulary without a genuine instrumental intent to act on the harm named. The phrase...
- Leakage
- Intentional or unintentional communication of intent to commit violence to a third party. One of TRAP-18's eight proximal warning behaviours and the...
- Pathway-to-Violence Model
- A five-stage sequential model (grievance, ideation, research and planning, probing and preparation, attack) developed by Calhoun and Weston and elaborated by the...
- Threat (Linguistic Definition)
- A speech act in which the speaker signals an intention to carry out harmful action against the recipient, with or without a...
- TRAP-18 (Terrorist Radicalization Assessment Protocol)
- An 18-indicator threat assessment framework developed by Meloy and colleagues, comprising 8 proximal warning behaviours (pathway, fixation, identification, novel aggression, energy burst,...
- Unconditional Threat
- A threat that signals harm without specifying a condition. The harm is framed as certain or likely without reference to what the...
Explained in these topics
- Threat Assessment for Mass Violence and Active-Shooter IncidentsWorkplace Assessment of Violence Risk, 21 items; an SPJ-style threat assessment framework developed by White and Meloy for occupationally-motivated targeted vi...
- Threatening Language: Taxonomy and Analysis