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GUIDELINES FOR UTILIZING COLLATERAL SOURCES OF INFORMATION IN CHILD CUSTODY EVALUATIONS
Author(s) -
Austin William G.
Publication year - 2002
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/j.174-1617.2002.tb00828.x
Subject(s) - collateral , credibility , discriminant validity , psychology , adversarial system , process (computing) , social psychology , political science , computer science , law , psychometrics , clinical psychology , internal consistency , operating system
A structure for utilizing third party or collateral sources of information in the child custody evaluation is discussed. Collateral information is vital to the process of trying to assess the credibility and validity of information obtained from the primary parties in a dispute. Information that is from more neutral parties has higher credibility and when the party has access to key information it produces more discriminant validity. When a source with high discriminant validity agrees with information from a primary party, then it enhances the convergent validity on an issue or hypothesis. Child custody cases are inherently characterized by biased data within the adversarial process. Gathering data from collateral sources and using a system to evaluate their usefulness on confirmation of hypotheses is a necessary part of the emerging forensic‐clinical‐scientific child custody evaluation paradigm.