Documenting the Prominence of Forensic Neuropsychology at National Meetings and in Relevant Professional Journals from 1990 to 2000

Abstract

Numerous authors have opined that forensic activities have become more prominent within clinical neuropsychology. To investigate the merits of these claims, the entire contents of Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology (ACN), Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology (JCEN), and The Clinical Neuropsychologist (TCN) from 1990 through 2000 were reviewed and cataloged. These three journals were selected because they are the highest-ranking clinical subscription journals according to surveys of neuropsychology practitioners. Prior to rating journal content, various categories of interest were delineated and practice ratings were obtained until the two raters reached 92% agreement. Each of the raters read the journal contents and recorded content ratings for half of the journal issues under review. Results of the 8323 ratings demonstrated increases across time in the absolute numbers of articles related to forensic neuropsychology, although variable and different for each journal. Published articles that were partially or substantially forensic in nature in the three journals combined increased from 4% in 1990 to 14% in 2000. An annual peak in absolute number (n =32;16%) of forensic journal articles occurred in 1997. The most common topic of 139 articles published in ACN, JCEN, and TCN from 1990 to 2000 was malingering, which appeared in 86% of the general forensic articles. Forensic presentations at annual NAN meetings ranged from 3.9 to 11.3% (M =8%) of the convention programs, whereas within Division 40's programs at the American Psychological Association meeting, the average percentage ranged from 2.3 to 11.7% (M =6%). Results pertaining to each journal and to specific forensic topics are presented and implications of these and other results are discussed.