WAVR21
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
- Factors
- 21
- Setting
- Occupational and institutional threat assessment
- Integrates
- Language analysis with behavioural history, mental state, and proximity to means
Common questions
Why does WAVR21 incorporate language analysis alongside behavioural factors?+
Threatening or grievance-driven communications, whether spoken, written, or posted online, often carry signals of escalating intent, so analyzing the content and tone of a subject's language provides context that behavioural history and mental-state factors alone would miss.
How is proximity to means treated differently from motive in this framework?+
Motive and grievance factors assess why a person might act, while proximity to means looks at practical access, such as whether the subject can obtain a weapon or reach the intended target, and both are scored because a highly motivated subject without access poses a different level of risk than one with both.
Related terms
- 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,...
- Expressive Anger
- Language that vents strong negative emotion using threat vocabulary without a genuine instrumental intent to act on the harm named. The phrase...
- 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...
- Unconditional Threat
- A threat that signals harm without specifying a condition. The harm is framed as certain or likely without reference to what the...