IS THERE ANY MAGIC IN A FAMILY REPORT: HOW GOOD ARE EXPERT REPORTS - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

IS THERE ANY MAGIC IN A FAMILY REPORT: HOW GOOD ARE EXPERT REPORTS IN THE FAMILY COURT?

Chris Lennings, Alison O’Neill and Katie Seidler LSC Psychology – Sydney

Expert psychological reports are a necessary and important part

• f judicial decision making

in the Family Court of Australia

(Chisholm, 1997)

SIGNIFICANCE OF EXPERT REPORTS

 Complaints made to the Health Care Complains Commission (HCCC) about expert psychologists and their reports are on the rise (Wilmouth, 2007)  Psychologists working in the Family Law area are reported to registration boards more frequently than any of their colleagues in other branches of psychology (Neoh, Papaleo & Kennedy, 2010)

COMPLAINTS RE: EXPERT REPORTS

 Poor report quality made up 14% of all reports of psychological misconduct to the National Registration Board for Psychologists (Grenyer & Lewis, 2012)  “Custody evaluations have become the target of much criticism within the past decade. Experts in child-custody evaluation have produced a long litany of complaints concerning deficiencies and abuses in custody evaluations” (Grisso, 2010)

ARE WE AS GOOD AS WE THINK WE ARE?

 Alarmingly, a study by Jane Ireland in 2012 found more than two thirds of psychologists’ reports submitted to the Family Court in the UK were of an unsatisfactory standard.

ALISON O'NEILL aoneill@lscpsych.com.au

IRELAND (2012) STUDY

1. What makes a good (useful) report? 2. How do Lawyers perceive psychologists’ expert report? 3. What psychologists think makes a good report? 4. And how psychologists rate themselves on writing such reports?

WHAT ARE WE INTERESTED IN?

Witt (2010) developed a forensic report check-list to reduce errors and omission: 1.

• rganise the report coherently

2. state a forensic referral question clearly 3. include only data relevant to the forensic opinion 4. separate observations from inferences 5. consider multiple sources of data 6. use appropriate psychological tests 7. consider alternate hypothesis 8. support opinions with data 9. clarify connections between data and opinions and

• 10. eliminate professional jargon.

FORENSIC GUIDELINES

 Plethora of literature available on how to write expert reports (Gould, 1998 and Stahl, 2011).  Several studies have surveyed lawyers and judges on their

• pinion about the quality of expert reports (La Fortune, 1997).

NEED FOR RESEARCH

 La Fortune’s survey of legal consumers was largely encouraging, with positive ratings for experts' knowledge (81%), professional behaviour (75%) and quality of evaluations (72%). In addition, three fifths of the sample (61%) provided positive ratings of the quality of experts in Court testimony.  However, the lowest rate of endorsement was for quality of reports submitted to the Court, with only 50% of respondents giving positive ratings of report quality.

RESEARCH BY SURVEY

 Few studies have reviewed the reports themselves. There remains a dearth of research within the Family Court.  Bow & Quinnell (USA) and Professor Jane Ireland (UK)  “An actual review of child custody evaluation reports is a more accurate indicator of evaluation practices and procedures”. (Bow & Quinnell)

ONLY TWO STUDIES USED ACTUAL REPORTS

This type of research (i.e. assessing the actual reports) is “complicated by confidentiality issues, willingness of mental health professionals to share their work, and lack of readily accessible reports from private practitioners. These factors have deterred needed research in the child custody area” (Bow & Quinnell, 2002)

OBSTACLES

 Study 2 will survey three different professional groups working in the Family Court system in NSW:

• 1. Expert Psychologists
• 2. Judges
• 3. Independent Children’s Lawyers

…regarding their opinions on what constitutes a high quality report, according to the criteria used in Study 1.

METHODOLOGY – STUDY 2

 Psychologists and Lawyers will be asked to rate their perception of:

• the importance of each criteria
• how well they believe they (the psychologist) typically

address that criteria in the reports they write

• the overall quality of the reports they write for the Family

Court.

METHODOLOGY – STUDY 2

ALISON O'NEILL aoneill@lscpsych.com.au

 Note – when referring to lawyers we had two types  ICLs (n=26) and Family Lawyers (n=18)

• Total = 45 (but only 42 completed all portions of the survey

 In the main differences between these two groups were negligible so we have collapsed data for these two groups.  Psychologists n=13.

• Representativeness?

 Note as psychologist sample is small and sample sizes are asymmetric, P<.01 is taken to be a satisfactory test of significance, p<.05 is interpreted as “trending”.

RESULTS

ANOVA for mean rating of overall satisfaction.

OVERALL SATISFACTION

 Overall rating of reports by lawyers: the table shows that all lawyers thought reports were at least good or better, none indicated that reports were poor. The results were normally distributed, the table shows that 45% of lawyers thought that expert reports prepared by psychologists were very good or excellent.

SLIGHTLY BETTER NEWS

OVERALL QUALITY

 First we analyzed the difference between lawyers rating of importance of each of the report variables, then we asked the lawyers to rate how well they thought psychologists actually did.  On almost every variable lawyers ascribed more importance to the report writing element than their rating of psychologist

• competence. That is, most elements we will discuss were

thought of by lawyers as important or very important but psychologists were rated as falling between poor and very

• good. Rarely was the excellent category used.

 To our concern quite a few lawyers rated individual elements

• f psychologists’ reports as poor, suggesting despite an
• verall adequate rating some elements of psychologists

reports were seen as well below standard.

A WORD ABOUT METHODOLOGY

LAWYER OUTPUT TYPICALLY LOOKED LIKE

CONFIDENTIALITY

PROCEDURAL FAIRNESS

METHOD

ALISON O'NEILL aoneill@lscpsych.com.au

PROFESSIONAL ISSUES

ALISON O'NEILL aoneill@lscpsych.com.au

PSYCHOMETRICS

Variable

• Mean

Lawyer Mean Psychologist F (d.f. 1,53) Significance Psychometrics in report Imp 3.65 4.00 2.16 n.s

• Actual 2.92

4.00 21.59 P<.001 Relevance

• f

choice Actual 4.28 4.38 0.14 n.s.

• Imp

3.28 4.46 19.03 P<.001 Risk Assessment Imp 4.40 4.53 0.46 ns

• (Domestic

Violence) Actual 2.77 4.30 31.14 P<.001

ALISON O'NEILL aoneill@lscpsych.com.au

STRUCTURE

CONTENT

PARENTING SKILL

Variable

• Mean

Lawyer Mean Psychologist F (d.f. 1,50) Significance Child care history Imp 4.333 4.846 8.93 P<.01

• Actual 3.461

4.462 16.85 P<.001 Child parent relationship Imp 4.667 4.846 1.52 n.s.

• Actual 3.641

4.692 20.93 P<.001 Parenting Capacity Imp 4.667 4.923 3.34 n.s.

• Actual 3.564

4.692 37.93 P<.001 Discipline Technique Imp 3.949 4.154 .95 n.s.

• Actual 2.821

4.000 17.07 P<.001 Affection and nurturance Imp 4.333 4.538 .937 n.s.

• Actual 3.179

4.308 21.76 P<.001 Parental strengths Imp 4.564 4.692 .648 n.s.

• Actual 3.316

4.308 13.35 P<.001 Household routines Imp 3.897 3.923 .02 n.s.

• Actual 2.667

3.846 15.23 P<.001

OBSERVATIONS AND CHILD

FORMULATIONS & RECOMMENDATIONS