Precise nature, extent, or causes of racial and ethnicĭisproportionality, it remains an issue of continued concern (e.g.,īartholet, 2009, 2011 Bartholet et al., 2011 Dorch et al., 2010 ĭrake & Jonson-Reid, 2011 Drake et al., 2011 McRoy et al., 2011 Perhaps because of lack of agreement about the General Accountability Office,Ģ007 Yaun et al. (e.g., Ards et al., 2003 Barth, 2005 Billingsley & Giovanni, 1972 Ĭasey Family Programs, 2006 Chapin Hall Center for Children, 2008 Ĭourtney & Skyles, 2003 Derezotes et al., 2005 Hill, 2006 NeedellĮt al., 2003 Shaw et al., 2008 U.S. Welfare system has been a topic of concern for more than forty years The disproportional representation of minority children in the child 21.5% of the victims were AfricanĪmericans, 22.1% were Hispanic, and 43.9% were White. Lawyers, social services staff, or others who had contact with theĪlleged victim as part of their jobs. AnĮstimated 57.6% of the referrals came from teachers, police officers, Of Health and Human Services, 2012), Child Protective Services (CPS)Īgencies received an estimated 3.4 million referrals alleging childĪbuse or neglect, involving an estimated 6.2 million children. Scale of the problem, in the United States during 2011 (U.S. This is a substantive topic ofĬonsiderable practical and policy importance. Maltreatment and to investigate dissimilarities in system performanceįor different racial and ethnic groups. child welfare services system to detect child The second purpose of the paper is substantive-to use SDT to analyze The JDM behaviors of systems, rather than those of specific individuals Individuals-many cases approach, and which yields results that describe The present study illustrates whatĬan be called systemic research, which relies on a many Individual-many cases paradigm, whereas nomothetic research relies on a Generally speaking, idiographic research relies on a single Which aggregates and summarizes the responses of large numbers of

(1981) well-known studies of framing effects on preference reversal, Investigations of large groups of people to find general laws ofīehavior that hold for people in general e.g., Tversky and Kahneman’s Nomothetic research in JDM generally involves Physicians’ diagnostic judgments and treatment decisions for acute Individual in order to achieve better understanding of him or her Į.g., Gonzalez-Vallejo et al. JDM, idiographic research typically involves intensive study of an The distinction between idiographic and nomotheticĪpproaches in psychology is widely attributed to Allport (1937). Of system-level decision making behavior (e.g., McClelland, 2011 SwetsĮt al., 2000). Swets, 1996 Swets et al., 2000 Wickens, 2002), which was developed toĪnalyze the behavior of a single judge, can be applied to the analysis Illustrate how Signal Detection Theory (SDT) (Green & Swets, 1966 Keywords: signal detection theory, disproportionality, child welfare This study illustrates the potential for JDM techniques such as SDT toĬontribute to understanding of system-level decision making processes. Justified readily in terms of objective measures of group differences. Analyses show that the child welfare services system treatsīlacks differently from Hispanics and Whites in ways that cannot be Values of d ′ (signal strength) are roughly the sameįor Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics but there are pronounced groupĭifferences in C (a measure of the location of the decision Referral was made and for whom the allegation was substantiated–is The rate of true positives–children for whom a

Negatives-children for whom no referral was made but who are in fact Higher for Blacks than for other groups, as is the incidence of false The incidence ofįalse positives-referrals leading to unsubstantiated findings-is Less accurate for them than for Whites or Hispanics. Blacks have higher rates of referral and the system is Of the child welfare services systems to detect instances of child Techniques to national and state-level data sets to analyze the ability Many false positives) or under-warn (too many misses). SDT quantifies the ability toĭistinguish between signal and noise by separating accuracy of theĭetection system from response bias-the propensity to over-warn (too Single judge but also can be used to analyze decisions made by Signal detection theory (SDT) was developed to analyze the behavior of a 114-128Ī signal detection theory analysis of racial and ethnic disproportionality in the referral and substantiation processes of the U.S. Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 9, No. 2, March 2014, pp. A signal detection theory analysis of racial and ethnic disproportionality in the referral and substantiation processes of the U.S.