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The Matrimonial StrategistLJN NewslettersNewsSections

Test Item Transparency

By David A. Martindale and James R. Flens

We hypothesize that if attorneys, judges, and psychologists were asked to rate the usefulness of data from psychological tests administered in the context of family law matters, attorneys and judges would assign higher ratings than would psychologists. Dianna Gould-Saltman, a former family law attorney, now a judge sitting in the Los Angeles Superior Court, has opined that attorneys like tests because they “break things down to numbers, and we understand numbers.” [Gould-Saltman's views were expressed in an article entitled "Testing, One, Two, Three, Testing: An Attorney Perspective," appearing in the Journal of Child Custody, 2(1&2), 2005, pp. 71-81.]

Some of the problems inherent in psychological testing conducted in the context of litigated custody disputes have been addressed previously in The Matrimonial Strategist [Martindale, D. A. (2005). Psychological Assessment: Evaluating the Evaluations. The Matrimonial Strategist, 22:12, 3-5]. Here, we address the problems that are inalterably linked to test-taker motivation and to the susceptibility [and possible ease] of psychological test data to deliberate distortion. Though the topic of test-taker motivation has been addressed at length in many articles and text chapters, the susceptibility of psychological test data to deliberate distortion has received less attention, and methods for addressing the problem are not as effective as non-psychologists are led to believe they are.

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