TY - JOUR
T1 - Discerning bias in forensic psychological reports in insanity cases
AU - Neal, Tess
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was conducted as part of the author's doctoral dissertation under the mentorship of Stanley L. Brodsky, Department of Psychology, The University of Alabama. The dissertation was supported by a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement grant from the National Science Foundation (GR23141) and a dissertation grant from the American Academy of Forensic Psychology (AAFP). Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of NSF or the AAFP. Portions of these results were presented at the 2014 annual conference of the American Psychology‐Law Society (AP‐LS) in New Orleans, LA.
Funding Information:
National Science Foundation, Grant/Award Number: GR23141
Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
PY - 2018/5/1
Y1 - 2018/5/1
N2 - This project began as an attempt to develop systematic, measurable indicators of bias in written forensic mental health evaluations focused on the issue of insanity. Although forensic clinicians observed in this study did vary systematically in their report-writing behaviors on several of the indicators of interest, the data are most useful in demonstrating how and why bias is hard to ferret out. Naturalistic data were used in this project (i.e., 122 real forensic insanity reports), which in some ways is a strength. However, given the nature of bias and the problem of inferring whether a particular judgment is biased, naturalistic data also made arriving at conclusions about bias difficult. This paper describes the nature of bias – including why it is a special problem in insanity evaluations – and why it is hard to study and document. It details the efforts made in an attempt to find systematic indicators of potential bias, and how this effort was successful in part, but also how and why it failed. The lessons these efforts yield for future research are described. We close with a discussion of the limitations of this study and future directions for work in this area.
AB - This project began as an attempt to develop systematic, measurable indicators of bias in written forensic mental health evaluations focused on the issue of insanity. Although forensic clinicians observed in this study did vary systematically in their report-writing behaviors on several of the indicators of interest, the data are most useful in demonstrating how and why bias is hard to ferret out. Naturalistic data were used in this project (i.e., 122 real forensic insanity reports), which in some ways is a strength. However, given the nature of bias and the problem of inferring whether a particular judgment is biased, naturalistic data also made arriving at conclusions about bias difficult. This paper describes the nature of bias – including why it is a special problem in insanity evaluations – and why it is hard to study and document. It details the efforts made in an attempt to find systematic indicators of potential bias, and how this effort was successful in part, but also how and why it failed. The lessons these efforts yield for future research are described. We close with a discussion of the limitations of this study and future directions for work in this area.
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U2 - 10.1002/bsl.2346
DO - 10.1002/bsl.2346
M3 - Article
C2 - 29672912
AN - SCOPUS:85048724492
SN - 0735-3936
VL - 36
SP - 325
EP - 338
JO - Behavioral Sciences and the Law
JF - Behavioral Sciences and the Law
IS - 3
ER -