Reply to "A Critical Review of Published Competency-to-Confess Measures"

Responds to the article by Rogers et al (see record 2005-01764-006) which reviewed four published Miranda measures (Comprehension of Miranda Rights, Comprehension of Miranda Rights-Recognition, Comprehension of Miranda Vocabulary, and Function of Rights in Interrogation). The current author states that the review by Rogers et al regarding "Instruments for Assessing Understanding and Appreciation of Miranda Rights" (Grisso, 1998b; they called them "competency-to-confess measures"), a few of their points are well taken. These include the need for new norms and the instruments' use of wording of the Miranda warnings that varies across police departments, as well as the absence of certain types of psychometric information for some of the instruments (about which more will be said later). These matters are being addressed in current research projects to update the instruments (Goldstein, Condie, Kalbeitzer, Osman, & Geier, 2003; Oberlander, Goldstein, & Goldstein, 2003), and the manual describes ways for clinicians to work with the problem of differences among police versions of the Miranda warnings. For the most part, however, the review's concerns are unwarranted and its arguments misleading. They rest on a misinterpretation of the instruments' purpose, as well as questionable (and sometimes inaccurate) application of standards for judging tests. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)