An investigation of accuracy and variability levels of judgments and decisions in a child protection context

• Autor(a) principal: Monteiro, Isabel Dantas Marques
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/40546
• topic: Noise; Variability; Judgment and decision-making; Child protection; Risk; Ruído; Variabilidade; Julgamento e tomada de decisão; Proteção de crianças; Risco; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Psicologia

Decision-making in the context of child protection is an extremely complex challenge, still understudied. To increase scientific knowledge in this domain, this study had as its primary goal to investigate the accuracy and variability of judgments and decisions made by a sample of 104 professionals working in Child Protection Committees in Portugal. For this, three decision-making scenarios were created varying in severity: low, moderate, and high. All professionals were asked, for each of them, to make two decisions - removal and recommended intervention - and a series of judgments - degree of severity, recurrence probability, and the impact of protective factors. Results showed that these professionals had very high levels of accuracy, and that levels of decision and judgment variability depended on the types of case. There was considerable disagreement on the proposed intervention, specifically in the cases where the child was to be removed from home. Additionally, judgments regarding the mitigating impact of protective factors varied largely, and disagreement was higher for more severe cases. It was also possible to observe that variability in the judgment phase did not necessarily translate into variability in the decision-making stages. Such results have training implications for professionals working in child protection settings.