School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Arizona State University.
Law School, Vanderbilt University.
Psychol Sci Public Interest. 2019 Dec;20(3):135-164. doi: 10.1177/1529100619888860.
In this article, we report the results of a two-part investigation of psychological assessments by psychologists in legal contexts. The first part involves a systematic review of the 364 psychological assessment tools psychologists report having used in legal cases across 22 surveys of experienced forensic mental health practitioners, focusing on legal standards and scientific and psychometric theory. The second part is a legal analysis of admissibility challenges with regard to psychological assessments. Results from the first part reveal that, consistent with their roots in psychological science, nearly all of the assessment tools used by psychologists and offered as expert evidence in legal settings have been subjected to empirical testing (90%). However, we were able to clearly identify only about 67% as generally accepted in the field and only about 40% have generally favorable reviews of their psychometric and technical properties in authorities such as the Mental Measurements Yearbook. Furthermore, there is a weak relationship between general acceptance and favorability of tools' psychometric properties. Results from the second part show that legal challenges to the admission of this evidence are infrequent: Legal challenges to the assessment evidence for any reason occurred in only 5.1% of cases in the sample (a little more than half of these involved challenges to validity). When challenges were raised, they succeeded only about a third of the time. Challenges to the most scientifically suspect tools are almost nonexistent. Attorneys rarely challenge psychological expert assessment evidence, and when they do, judges often fail to exercise the scrutiny required by law.
在本文中，我们报告了心理学家在法律环境中进行心理评估的两部分调查结果。第一部分涉及对 22 项经验丰富的法医心理健康从业者调查中心理学家报告在法律案件中使用的 364 种心理评估工具的系统审查，重点是法律标准和科学及心理计量理论。第二部分是对心理评估的可采性挑战进行法律分析。第一部分的结果表明，与他们在心理学科学中的根源一致，心理学家使用的几乎所有评估工具都经过了实证检验（90%），并作为法律环境中的专家证据提供。然而，我们只能明确识别出约 67%的工具在该领域被普遍接受，只有约 40%的工具在《心理测量年鉴》等权威机构中对其心理计量和技术特性有普遍有利的评价。此外，工具心理计量特性的普遍接受度和有利性之间存在较弱的关系。第二部分的结果表明，对这种证据的可采性提出法律挑战的情况很少见：在样本中，仅因任何原因对评估证据提出法律质疑的案例仅占 5.1%（其中一半以上涉及有效性质疑）。当提出质疑时，只有约三分之一的情况获得成功。对最具科学嫌疑的工具提出质疑的情况几乎不存在。律师很少对心理专家评估证据提出质疑，而且当他们提出质疑时，法官往往未能行使法律要求的审查权。
