Forensic psychologists are important advisors to the lawyers,  mediators, and judges in child custody disputes. Unfortunately, messy  child-custody disputes are an all-too-common occurrence when parents  divorce. In some especially difficult cases, one parent may make an  allegation against the other, and sometimes these allegations are made  primarily to gain the support of the courts.

As impartial evaluators, forensic psychologists provide psychological  assessments with a focus on parenting. The psychologist informs the  fact-finder (usually the judge). Because parenting evaluations are  supposed to be impartial by nature, they cannot involve themselves  directly in the child-custody hearings. In other words, the forensic  psychologist cannot approach the evaluation with any investment in the  outcome of the case.

In the case of child abuse and/or neglect, the state must often  intervene to provide a safe environment for the child until they can  either be safely reunited with their parents or they are placed in a  safe living environment. In these cases, forensic psychologists can  offer thorough evaluations to help identify risk factors for child  mistreatment, as well as ways to ameliorate risk.

Parenting evaluations consist of four major components:

1. Interview: Whenever possible, the psychologist must obtain personal history from the person being evaluated.

2. Record review (or review of “discovery”): The  psychologist can receive records from a number of parties to the case  and can use prior findings to help formulate a case.

3. Collateral consultation: Is the parent involved  with a counselor or a parenting agency? If so, it is usually helpful to  conduct a collateral interview with that service provider to ascertain  the parent’s progress in treatment and what further treatments might be  necessary.

4. Psychological testing: Testing is used to help  determine if there are underlying risk factors (such as mental illness  or low IQ) that might be contributing to the risk to the child.

In all evaluations, the “best interest” of the child is the chief  criterion for the judge. A best interest determination can be  strengthened with a solid psychological evaluation of a parent.

References

Costanzo, M., & Krauss, D. (2012). Forensic and legal psychology: Psychological science  applied to law. New York, NY: Worth.

3-4 Short Paper: The History of Child Custody Arrangemen

 

I just want to take a moment to give you a little group feedback on your first short papers that you can keep in mind while you are working on your next one. In general, you did pretty well on these papers. It was evident to me that most of you took the time to read through the short paper rubric and my announcements relating to the paper prior to tackling it! I appreciate that so much! Here are some suggestions and reminders to make note of as we move along….

 

Please make sure to CAREFULLY REVIEW the individual feedback that I provided to you about your Module 1 Short Paper. This includes both the information that I provided on your grading sheet/rubric AND the notes and comments that I placed in green within the margins of your actual paper. I will admit that makes me nuts when students make repeated silly mistakes because they didn’t review specific feedback from prior assignments and make appropriate adjustments! I provide a lot of feedback, so please use it!

 

Please make sure to use APA format for your papers. This is particularly important when it comes to your in-text citations and references. I know that some of you are more familiar with APA format than others, and I expect some challenges here. If this applies to you, I would encourage you to review the announcements and resources that have been made available to you relating to the use of APA format. Just so you know, even though I have used APA formatting for almost 3 decades now, I still manage to mess my formatting up from time to time. I don’t expect perfection, just a really good try with all of the major components included.

 

Please make sure that you read the paper prompts (i.e., the questions that you need to answer for the paper) carefully and that you respond to ALL of the questions. It is easy to get so involved with one part of a paper that you completely space on some of the other required parts! It will also help to go back and read through the prompts one more time AFTER you have completed the paper (or at least think you have) just to make sure you’re not skipping something!

 

PROOFREAD your paper prior to submission! This can only boost your score! Believe me, I can tell which students do this and which students don’t. The ones that don’t often have a bunch of silly mistakes in them that are completely preventable.

 

Cite your sources! Unless you are providing a completely novel, original idea, you need to tell me where you got it, even if it is only from our textbook or from the other course materials like the example evaluations. You should have bothe in-text citations and a reference list in your

ts I would like to emphasize:

 

First of all, it is important for you to remember that you MUST acknowledge the work of other authors if you used it to develop your arguments (whether in an essay or a discussion post) either in a direct manner or indirect manner. To fail to do so implies that all of the ideas within a paper are entirely your own, which is pretty unlikely in an academic class. Don’t get me wrong – I WANT you to use other authors’ ideas! As a matter of fact, the point of these modules is to encourage you to integrate information from the assigned course materials and your own research (i.e., the work of other authors’) into your own work. It shows that you are using your new learning to think through and respond to the required questions. However, I don’t want you to do this without giving credit to the authors and sources that you used to develop your responses – to do so would be academically dishonest and, in a worst-case scenario, could even constitute plagiarism. In MOST of your writings, you should be referring to some other author’s work within the body of your writing, whether you refer to the authors of our textbook, the ancillary reports, case materials, and videos that are assigned as part of our course, or something else that you found on your own.

Citing sources is mandatory in a number of circumstances. These include the following:

When you use direct quotes you must cite your sources. If you use the exact words of another author, you must put the words in quotes and include an in-text citation.

When you paraphrase or rewrite what another author has said by putting it into your own words, you must still cite that source.

When you summarize another author’s arguments or data, you must cite that source.

When you are in doubt about the need to cite your source, cite your source!

There are also a limited number of situations where you do not need to cite your source. For example, you don’t necessarily need to cite your sources include when you are writing a personal essay about your own life, an opinion piece where you aren’t comparing your own ideas to some other person’s, or when you are stating something that is such common knowledge that is so frequently reported and easily verified that you can reasonably expect your audience to know it already (e.g., “The American Declaration of Independence occurred in 1776”).

We are using the APA style of bibliography in this class. In the general sense, a bibliography is a list of all sources that an author used during the process of researching and developing his/her work (e.g., essay, research paper, discussion post, etc.). The primary purpose of a bibliography is to acknowledge the work of other authors or scholars. There are a number of ways to develop a bibliography and each has it’s own rules and requirements. For example, when you see the words “Works Cited” before a list of resources, the author is using the MLA style of bibliography that was developed by the Modern Languages Association (MLA). Another style of bibliography is the APA style, and this is the one that you are required to use in this class. The reason we are using this style is because it was developed by the American Psychological Association (APA) and is the predominant format used in most published scholarly research by individuals within the many sub-disciplines of psychology. APA format is somewhat different than MLA or the other writing styles. For example, in APA style, the list of resources is referred to as a “reference list” and is found at the end of the writing under the centered heading of “References”. So, when I see a reference list headed with “Works Cited” instead of “References”, I know that the student is either unfamiliar with APA style or is confused because they have also learned to use a different style of writing in the past (i.e., MLA, Chicago/Turabian, etc.). None of these are really “right” or “wrong”, but we are using the one developed and endorsed by those in the field of psychology.

When using APA style, citing your sources involves including in-text citations within the body of your writing. In-text citations show specifically WHERE in your paper you used information from other authors. They are located in parentheses within the actual paragraphs of your writing and generally include the author’s last name and the publication date of the resource that the writer is citing or awarding credit to. For example, if the writer was citing something that I wrote or said in 2018, the in-text citation would likely look like this: (Hammond, 2018). When you are using direct quotes (i.e., the exact words of another author), you must also put the words in quotation marks and include the page or paragraph number where you found the quote. For example, if you were going to quote something the authors of our textbook said on page 16, your in-text citation would look like this: (Costanzo & Krauss, 2015, p. 16).

APA style also requires that you include corresponding references for EACH in-text citation in your writing. The purpose of references are to provide to the reader the additional specific information he/she would need to if he/she would actually like to locate the work you “referred to” by including in-text citations. These references are listed at the end of your submission, in alphabetical order, under the centered heading of “References”. The individual references might look slightly different depending upon the specific type of media that you are citing (i.e., a youtube video, a magazine article, a psychological report, a book, etc.), but they generally include the author(s) name, date of publication, full title of the work, and place where that source was published whether it be a professional journal, publishing company, or an internet website. Hence, if you cited some idea, concept, or quote from our textbook, the corresponding reference in the reference list would look like this: Costanzo, M., & Krauss, D. (2015). Forensic and legal psychology: Psychological science applied to law (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Worth Publishers.

SNHU has provided a number of resources to provide you with more specific direction on when and how to cite your sources, including specific information about how to use APA style to do so. Perhaps the most useful of these are the Online Writing Center and Shapiro Library. The Online Writing center is a free resource where students can schedule real-time online appointments with writing tutors, access video resources, and even download sample papers written in APA style. The Shapiro Library houses a number of citation guides with specific information on using various styles, including APA style. Both of these resources are accessible by clicking on “Online Student Services” on the top of BrightSpace home page and then the sub-area of “Academic Support”.

 

Finally, I would like to close by providing a list of the most common errors that students make regarding source citation. These are the things that will cause you to lose points on the Writing areas of the scoring rubrics.

 

Common Mistake #1: Students neglect to cite their sources when it would be appropriate to do so. When this happens, it is often the case that the student has not fully reviewed the requirements for this class, the requirements for the particular task, and/or the scoring rubrics. Other times, student’s think that, since they did not include any direct quotes, they don’t need to cite the work of others. Paraphrasing the work of other authors and putting into your own words still requires source citation!

Common Mistake #2: Students cite their sources, but not in the required APA style. When this happens, it is usually because the student doesn’t recognize that there is a difference between source citation using APA style and citation using other types of bibliography.

Common Mistake #3: Students include references without corresponding in-text citations or (less commonly) in-text citations without corresponding references. APA style requires you to include both. Remember – citations and references work together. You should not have one without the other.

Common Mistake #4: Students cite sources by simply by posting a list of internet addresses for the resources they used in their reference lists. While it is important to provide the web address when you cite information from the web, you also need to include corresponding in-text citations and all of the other required components of the references for those resources.

Common Mistake #5: Students neglect to include page, paragraph, or other relative information in their in-text citations when they are including directly quoted material. If you are using another author’s exact words, put them in quotes and include the exact location where you found them in your in-text citation. For a book or journal article, that would likely be a page number, for something on the internet, it might be a paragraph number, and for a video it might be the time location on the video where the material was quoted.

Common Mistake #4: Students don’t provide date of publication in their in-text citations and references. This usually happens when students are citing material from the internet and cannot locate the date that it was published. If you can’t find it, use “n.d.” in place of the actual date. This stands for “no date”.

Common Mistake #5: Incorrect placement of ending period when an in-text citation is involved. A fair number of students put a period after the sentence containing the cited material and before the actual citation. It should not be there. If I were to put a source citation at the end of this sentence, here is how it should look (Hammond, 2018). Notice there is no period after the word “look”.

Common Mistake #6: The in-text citation and reference do not adequately correspond. If the author includes an in-text citation, the reader should be able to easily find the corresponding reference within the reference list. The author information should match. For example, if the in-text citation reads (Hammond, 2018), the reference should START with Hammond and not some other information about the resource.

 

 

 

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Module Three

 

Child Custody Disputes

 

Module Three explains the important role psychologists play in child custody and child protection decisions. This module also offers an in-depth look at a child abuse evaluation, with an emphasis on critique of the self-report measure as a tool of forensic assessment.

 

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List of Topics and Sub-Modules for Module Three

 

Module Three: Child Custody Disputes

Web Page

Task: View this topic

 

Read this information to get started on your module.

Module Overview

Web Page

Task: View this topic

 

Read the module overview.

3-1 Discussion: Analyzing Different Child Abuse Evaluation Methods

Discussion Topic

Task: Reply to this topic

Starts Jan 20, 2018 11:59 PM

 

You have three points of analysis of one abuse case: the abuser’s self-report, the forensic psychologist’s evaluation, and a video of an actual instance of abuse.

 

In a post to the discussion board, answer these questions:

After reading the documents, what were your assumptions about the case and the father?

How did those assumptions change after watching the video?

Considering all the evidence you’ve watched and read, what conclusions can you draw about the usefulness of self-reporting in parental evaluations?

 

When you respond to classmates’ posts, discuss how your analysis of the case differed from your classmates and why (including if you drew different conclusions from the same information).

3-2 Reading: Parent Sentence Completion and Formal Psychological Review

Web Page

Task: View this topic

 

Read the Parent Sentence Completion Self-Report and the Sample Child Abuse Evaluation in Resources.

 

As you read these, try to use the information provided to paint a picture of the abusive parent, both as he sees himself and as he is in reality. Consider how his answers on the self-report match up to the forensic psychologist’s evaluation and what the discrepancy may mean.

 

NOTE: There is no deliverable for this activity; this is for your exploration and reflection on the module concepts ONLY.

 

This is a non-graded activity.

3-3 Viewing: Child Abuse Video

Web Page

Task: View this topic

 

You are about to watch a video (the video itself has been altered in order to keep identities confidential) where actual child abuse takes place. It is exceedingly difficult to watch and should not be viewed where any children might see or hear it. You can view the video here (cc).

 

The video you will watch shows the subject of the Parent Sentence Completion Self-Report and the Sample Child Abuse Evaluation abusing a child.

 

You have read the father’s self-report as well as the forensic psychologist’s evaluation. Keep those in mind as you watch this video and compare the actual abuse scene to what expectations and assumptions you had about the subject after reading the documents.

 

NOTE: There is no deliverable for this activity; this is for your exploration and reflection on the module concepts ONLY.

 

 

3-4 Short Paper: The History of Child Custody Arrangements

Assignment

Task: Submit to complete this assignment

 

Research the history of child custody arrangements in the United States. Make sure you include the following:

An overview of how child custody arrangements have evolved over the years

A discussion of the cultural changes that have affected the evolution of child custody in the United States, making sure to explain how specific societal changes influenced legal custodial arrangements

A summary of the current trends in child custody arrangements in the United States

 

For additional details, please refer to the Short Paper Case Study Rubric document.

Short Paper/Case Study Rubric

(Undergraduate)

Guidelines for Submission:

Short papers should use double spacing, 12 point Times New Roman font, and one inch margins. Sources should be cited according to a discipline appropriate citation method. Page length requirements

:

1—–2 pages

.

Critical Elements

Exemplary

(100%)

Proficient

(85

%)

Needs Improvement

(55

%

)

Not Evident

(0%)

Value

Main Elements

Includes all of the main

elements and requirements

and cites multiple examples to

illustrate each element

Includes most of the main

elements and requirements

and cites

many

examples to

illustrate each element

Includes some of the

main

elements and requirements

Does not include any of the

main elements and

requirements

25

Inquiry

and

Analysis

Provides

in

–

depth analysis

that

demonstrate

s

complete

understanding of multiple

concepts

Provides

in

–

depth analysis that

demonstrate

s

complete

understanding of some

concepts

Provides

in

–

depth analysis that

demonstrate

s

complete

understanding of

minimal

concepts

Does not provide

in

–

depth

analysis

2

0

Integration

and

Application

All

o

f the

course con

cepts

are

correctly applied

Most

of the course concept

s

are

correctly applied

Some of the

course concept

s

are

correctly applied

Does not

correctly apply

any of

the

course concepts

1

0

Critical

Thinking

Draws insightful conclusions

that are thoroughly defended

with evidence and examples

Draws informed conclusions

that are justified

with evidence

Draw

s logical conclusions

, but

does not defend with

evidence

Does not

draw

logical

conclusions

2

0

Research

Incorporates many scholarly

resources

effectively

that

reflect depth and breadth of

research

Incorporates some scholarly

resources

effectively

that

reflect depth

and breadth

of

research

Incorporates

very few scholarly

resources that reflect depth

and breadth

of research

Does not incorporate scholarly

resources that reflect depth

and breadth

of research

15

Writing

(Mechanics/Citations)

No errors related to

organization,

grammar and

style, and

citation

s

Minor errors related to

organization, g

rammar and

style, and citations

Some errors related to

organization, grammar and

style, and citations

Major errors related to

organization, grammar and

style, and citations