Crucial Issues in Psychological Evaluation of Custody
Essentials of a Good Evaluation
Focus on the best interests of the child(ren), parenting behavior, and the parent-child relationship - not on diagnoses, peripheral issues.
Knowledge of legal standards, presumptions.
Extensive use of collateral information - there is no substitute for talking to other involved adults such as day care providers and pediatricians, and obtaining police reports, school records, etc.
The examiner maintains an objective, evaluative role - does not provide therapy or other services to any member of the family
undergoing evaluation. The family is informed of this, and absence of confidentiality, before beginning the evaluation. Preferably,
they are informed of relevant issues well in advance of the first appointment so they can discuss concerns with their attorney.
If psychological tests are used, their many limitations are thoroughly understood.
Transparency - the examiner should explicitly state the facts and reasoning that support every significant conclusion presented.
High quality notes or recordings should be maintained.
Interview of child(ren) - For children over five or six years old, this becomes increasingly important.
Observation of parent-child interaction.
Competence on relevant issues - A custody evaluator should be well-informed about topics and assessment of alleged sexual abuse
and domestic violence.
Does not presume the reliability of any given source of information.
Is grounded on empirical findings rather than psychological theory (which is generally unproven).
Cautionary Notes on Psychological Testing
Almost any psychological test can be faked or manipulated.
No psychological test or battery can determine if someone was sexually abused or is a pedophile.
No widely used test in clinical psychology (MMPI-2, Rorschach) is directly relevant to parenting ability, or has validation data demonstrating a relationship.
No specialized test of parenting ability (i.e., the Bricklin tests) has good evidence of validity.
The Rorschach is incredibly controversial. Critics claim that only three indices (out of nearly one hundred) have substantial evidence of validity and the norms are badly flawed (see next bullet).
A number of popular tests (Rorschach, MCMI) appear to over-pathologize people - make them look psychiatrically sick when they are not.
Some tests (MMPI, MCMI) have correction indices that add points to compensate for defensiveness or other response styles. This is
very problematic, as such corrections have never been validated in a custody situation, and have never been shown to increase the validity
of the scales to which the adjustment is added. A man who obtains a high Narcissism score on the MCMI may have received the high score
solely due to adjustments for "defensiveness." This is very different than receiving a high score because he endorsed items such as "I am better than most people."
Tests and items that are direct and "transparent" usually work better than ones that are veiled or obscure, at least for cooperative subjects.
