Psychological Assessments in Legal Contexts: Are Courts Keeping "Junk Science" Out of the Courtroom?

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.

Trauma coping of mothers and children among poor people in Haiti: Mixed methods study of community-level research.

A qualitative interview is sensitive to social complexities and personal subjectivities, whereas quantitative assessment relies on preexisting frameworks to place responses in hierarchical frequencies and counts individual experiences as an additive aggregate. Using both enquiries, a mixed methods sequential exploratory design studied mothers' focus groups and their children's trauma assessment in 3 poor communities in the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The authors partnered with a free primary care clinic where they serve as U.

The Matching Criterion Purification for Differential Item Functioning Analyses in a Large-Scale Assessment.

The current study investigated the impact of matching criterion purification on the accuracy of differential item functioning (DIF) detection in large-scale assessments. The three matching approaches for DIF analyses (block-level matching, pooled booklet matching, and equated pooled booklet matching) were employed with the Mantel-Haenszel procedure. Five factors-the length of a test, the proportion of items exhibiting DIF, a sample size, a ratio of a reference and focal group, and the existence of an average ability difference between two groups-were manipulated.

Are pathologists accurately diagnosing eosinophilic esophagitis in children? A 9-year single academic institutional experience with interobserver observations.

Our aims were to evaluate (a) whether the incidence of eosinophilic esophagitis (EE) in children has increased, (b) whether the histologic diagnosis of EE has been accurate, and (c) potential interobserver variability in the counting of intraepithelial eosinophils in esophageal biopsies. A total of 1215 pediatric endoscopic esophageal biopsies were performed. In total, 289 biopsies were reviewed by one pathologist based on one of the following original histologic diagnoses: EE, reflux esophagitis (RE), or acute/chronic inflammation.

Cross-validation of the factor structure of the McGill Pain Questionnaire.

Low back pain patients' responses to the McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ) were factor analyzed using the principal factor method and direct oblique rotation procedures. Four factors were extracted that accounted for 55% of the total variance. Coefficients of congruence were computed in order to relate the current factors with those extracted in a previous factor analytic investigation.

The language of low back pain: factor structure of the McGill pain questionnaire.

Low back pain patients' responses to the McGill Pain Questionnaire were factor analyzed using a method of factor extraction which, relative to the procedures employed in previous investigations, minimized distortion of the factor solution. Four factors were found which accounted for 51% of the total variance. Three of the factors were composed solely of sensory, affective and evaluative descriptor subclasses, respectively.