Improving the Quality of Child Custody Evaluations: A Systematic Model [Paperback]

This book?resolves a key problem that all evaluators need toattend to:, i.e., what constructs ought to be measured?, all the while givingthem practical ways of doing this. It alsopresents data showing family court judges like the model, and it does this fairly briefly but in a waythat is nicely embedded in the research literature.

The allocation of child custody axiomatically takes the best interests of the child as its lodestar. Yet how do professionals tasked with evaluating these interests improve their judgments? This book proposes standardized guidelines for greater accuracy.

The book Improving the Quality of Child Custody Evaluations: A Systematic Model by Tolle and ODonohue provides a useful summary of what relevant factors to consider, based on empirical work on the effects of divorce on children, and how relevant and valid data can be obtained to inform a decision, for example, with the help of psychological tests...
An interesting part of the book is its review of empirical work on the effects of divorce: Tolle and ODonohue discuss its effects on childrens psychological well-being, family well-being, socioeconomic well-being, self-concept, social competence, and physical health problems. However, there is a lack of critical discussion of the causal inferences that can be drawn from such work. Several alternative explanations usually are pertinent, such as genetic ones (Kennair, 2003; Paris, 2000).
The extensive discussions of psychometric properties of various instruments such as psychological tests are probably useful to a practitioner, but they tend to be somewhat dull reading. The authors stress the importance of impression management in assessments for custody evaluations, in which much l3.