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Re: Evaluating Abuse Cases
>Also, note that the superiority of actuarial compared to clinical
judgment has been consistently demonstrated for over 50 years. It is one of
the most robust findings in psychology.
Holly, the issue to me is not one of superiority, but one of completeness.
There are a lot of examples that I could use here, but are you ruling out
all projectives? That seems a bit exteme to me.
How about the MMPI-2, a nice solid objective test. We are blissfully
offering interpretations based on the research of the last 50 years, but
the research was developed using the MMPI, not the MMPI-2. Greene, I
think, pointed out that the two-point codes for the two tests agree only
about 67% of the time. Shouldn't some clinical judgement be involved
here??? Clearly, the two tests are not measuring the same things unless
Greene is full of bull hockey..... (in defense of the MMPI-2, Ben P. wrote
another article saying that if you only compare those profiles where the
two highest scales are at least a SD above the third highest scale, the
comparison rate goes up to about 80%. What a sad defense!). My point is
that it is simply not enough to give a test, get a score, and look up the
prediction. Clinical judgement is always required.
(I suspect that the arguments of objective testing verses clinical
judgement stem from c.j. based on no test data at all, but I haven't
reviewed all of the studies that you referenced..... If that is so, that
is not my position at all.)
When you have collected nice objective data in the form of test scores,
isn't clinical judgement involved in deciphering the implications of that
data into some kind of predictions and reports?
This is not a simple issue, but again, the item that started this thread
refered to using the Rorschach in COURT. I would suggest that such
concerns are not about accuracy as much as defense of the psychological
testimony.
Warmly,
Jim Hord