A Judge’s Guide

EXPERT HELP
accompanying manual describing the test’s development, its psychometric
properties, and procedure for administration.
• It must have been proved to be reliable. (Heilbrun recommends a
published reliability coefficient of at least .80.)
• It should be relevant to the legal issue or to a psychological construct
underlying the legal issue. Whenever possible, relevance should be
supported by validation research published in peer-reviewed journals.
• Standard administration should be used, with testing conditions as close as
possible to the quiet, distraction-free ideal.
• Results of the test should not be applied toward a purpose for which the
test was not developed. (For example, an intelligence test should not be
used to prove psychopathology.)
• Response style should be assessed. If the response is malingering, defensive,
or irrelevant, rather than reliable/honest, other data sources may have to be
emphasized or the test results discounted.
METHOD THREE: FIVE SOURCE CROSS-CHECK. Picking up on the APA’s
recommendations for multiple sources of data gathering, 36 Jonathan Gould
proposes that all psychologists use the same five sources of information for an
investigation: 37
• structured interviews;
• self-reported data;
• standardized psychological tests;
• collateral interview data and record review; and
• direct observational data.
You may wish to inquire whether all five categories of information were
investigated, what each revealed relevant to the court’s concerns, and whether
when cross checked they supported one view or contained contradictions.
METHOD FOUR: NEXUS TO LEGAL ISSUES. Vivienne Roseby’s five elements
that establish a nexus between test results and legal issues, outlined above, can also
be used as a basis for in-court queries. 38 Using her protocol, the following
questions could be posed:
110 110