Date of Award

2-6-2015

Document Type

Undergraduate Capstone Project

Degree Name

Psy.D.

Organizational Unit

Graduate School of Professional Psychology

First Advisor

Michael Karson

Second Advisor

Jamie Shapiro

Third Advisor

Nancy Gary

Keywords

Acceptance and commitment therapy, Training manual, Concussions, Psychological flexibility

Abstract

A forensic report is the primary work product of a forensic psychologist. The aim of a forensic report is to inform and influence the court. Unlike a clinical report, a forensic report influences the outcome of a legal conflict. This means that greater care must be taken in writing the report. The following errors (Grisso, 2010) were used to discuss best practices in forensic report writing: failure to answer the referral question, organization problems, language problems, mixed data and interpretation, inclusion of irrelevant data, over-reliance on a single source of data, improper psychological test use, failure to consider alternative hypotheses, and opinions without sufficient explanation. The purpose of this paper is to provide in one place all the information needed to improve forensic report writing, and to help the reader apply the literature using specific examples. Redacted report samples were collected from psychologists, graduate psychology trainees, teaching assistant experience, and clinical work. Identified errors in these samples were then corrected using the recommendations in the literature. Geared toward graduate psychology trainees, each section should serve both as a tutorial and as a brief checklist to help the reader avoid common pitfalls and assist in promoting better forensic report writing.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Extent

53 pages

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Psychology Commons

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