Personality Assessments in Legal Contexts - A Special Issue of the JPA Overview (1 CE)

In March 2022, the Journal of Personality Assessment released a special issue regarding Personality Assessment in Legal Contexts. This special issue addresses a major gap in the literature by providing comprehensive, credible reviews of the psychometric evidence for and legal status of some of the most commonly-used psychological and personality assessment measures used in forensic evaluations. The Special Issue responds to Neal and colleagues’ (2019) call for research to improve the state of and access to knowledge about psychological assessments in legal contexts, and encourages critical thinking about forensic assessment in the spirit of improvement. These articles offer clarity about the strengths and weaknesses of a number of assessment instruments to inform psychologists’ preparation for expert testimony, lawyers’ preparation for direct and cross-examination, judges’ evidence admissibility determinations, and scholars’ future research. We assembled teams of authors with different perspectives and areas of expertise to review each tool fairly, including several adversarial collaborations. Articles on the Rorschach and R-PAS, MMPI-3, PCL-R, MCMI-IV and MACI-II, PAI and PAI-A, SIRS-2, HCR-20V3, TSI and TSI-2, and the MacCAT-CA, ECST-R, and CAST*MR are included. Watch this overview video for more information about the series