Psychological Assessment: Evaluating the Evaluations

Functional Abilities

In order to examine the roll of testing in custody evaluations critically, we must consider what type of information we are seeking, how tests may (or may not) assist us in gathering pertinent information, and the ways in which tests of every type are deficient. The search for pertinent information is impeded when we look in the wrong places. A 1971 United States Supreme Court decision in a case unrelated to child custody matters (Griggs, et al. v. Duke Power Co, 401 U.S. 424), called the attention of custody evaluators to what have come to be known as functional abilities. In Griggs, the Court ruled that “testing procedures must be demonstrably reasonable measures of (or predictors of) job performance.” Martindale DA, Gould, JW: Child Custody. Spielberger C (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology. New York: Academic Press/Elsevier, 2004; p. 323-328. Our endeavors to assess the characteristics that bear directly upon parenting are more likely to meet with success if we conceptualize parenting as a job and focus our attention on those attributes, behaviors, attitudes, and skills that are reliably related to the demands of the job.