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Exploring a Process‐Oriented Forensic Family Observation Protocol[Note 1. I am indebted to Drs. Barbara Fidler, Richard Warschak, ...]
Author(s) -
Garber Benjamin D.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
family court review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.171
H-Index - 4
eISSN - 1744-1617
pISSN - 1531-2445
DOI - 10.1111/fcre.12217
Subject(s) - protocol (science) , observational study , process (computing) , psychology , computer science , landmark , applied psychology , data science , data mining , artificial intelligence , medicine , alternative medicine , pathology , operating system
This article recommends a modification of the child interview and observational components of the conventional child custody evaluation. By scheduling these events in back‐to‐back sequence, the evaluator adds critical process‐oriented data to familiar content‐oriented data. These additional data include at least eight landmark separation, reunion, and transition events valuable to understanding the dynamic family system. The benefits of this protocol are discussed in terms of the ecological validity of available data, reduced evaluation time and costs, and research. Limitations are discussed relevant to questions of sampling bias, fatigue and sequence effects, and practical dilemmas that arise when evaluating families with many children.