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Data integration in legal evaluations: Can clinicians deliver on their premises?
Author(s) -
Faust David
Publication year - 1989
Publication title -
behavioral sciences and the law
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.649
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1099-0798
pISSN - 0735-3936
DOI - 10.1002/bsl.2370070405
Subject(s) - computer science , simple (philosophy) , data science , premises , cognitive psychology , data integration , psychology , data mining , epistemology , political science , law , philosophy
Clinicians often claim to base their conclusions on configural analysis and integration of most or all of the data. However, research suggests that subjective beliefs about complex interpretive strategies and their resultant success are largely illusory. Studies show that: (1) access to more data does not necessarily improve judgmental accuracy, (2) clinical judgments, which purportedly depend on configural analyses, can usually be duplicated by simple linear models, (3) individuals often have difficulty deciphering interactions or patterns among just two or three variables, and (4) actuarial methods, even those that simply add variables together, almost always equal or exceed the accuracy of clinicians who purport to integrate large amounts of information. Corrective suggestions are discussed that may help the clinician better manage large data sets.