In this article, we report the results of a two-part investigation of psychological assessments by psychologists in legal contexts. The first part involves a systematic review of the 364 psychological assessment tools psychologists report having used in legal cases across 22 surveys of experienced forensic mental health practitioners, focusing on legal standards and scientific and psychometric theory. The second part is a legal analysis of admissibility challenges with regard to psychological assessments. Results from the first part reveal that, consistent with their roots in psychological science, nearly all of the assessment tools used by psychologists and offered as expert evidence in legal settings have been subjected to empirical testing (90%). However, we were able to clearly identify only about 67% as generally accepted in the field and only about 40% have generally favorable reviews of their psychometric and technical properties in authorities such as the Mental Measurements Yearbook. Furthermore, there is a weak relationship between general acceptance and favorability of tools' psychometric properties. Results from the second part show that legal challenges to the admission of this evidence are infrequent: Legal challenges to the assessment evidence for any reason occurred in only 5.1% of cases in the sample (a little more than half of these involved challenges to validity). When challenges were raised, they succeeded only about a third of the time. Challenges to the most scientifically suspect tools are almost nonexistent. Attorneys rarely challenge psychological expert assessment evidence, and when they do, judges often fail to exercise the scrutiny required by law.

中文翻译：

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法律环境中的心理评估：法院是否将“垃圾科学”拒之门外？

在本文中，我们报告了由心理学家在法律背景下进行的两部分心理评估调查的结果。第一部分涉及对心理学家报告的364种心理评估工具的系统评价，这些工具已在22项针对经验丰富的法医精神卫生从业人员的调查中用于法律案件，重点关注法律标准以及科学和心理计量学理论。第二部分是关于心理评估的可受理性挑战的法律分析。第一部分的结果表明，与心理学家的根源一致，几乎所有心理学家使用的评估工具以及在法律环境中作为专家证据提供的评估工具都经过了实证检验（90％）。然而，我们只能清楚地识别出大约67％的人是该领域普遍接受的人，而只有大约40％的人在诸如《心理测量年鉴》等权威机构中对其心理和技术特性进行了普遍好评。此外，在工具的心理测量特性的普遍接受度与可取性之间存在弱关系。第二部分的结果表明，很少有法律证据质疑接受该证据的情况：由于任何原因，评估证据的法律挑战仅发生在样本的5.1％的案件中（其中一半以上涉及有效性的质疑） 。当提出挑战时，它们只有大约三分之一的时间成功了。对最科学怀疑的工具的挑战几乎不存在。