Policy Statement of the American Board of Professional Neuropsychology regarding Third Party Observation and the recording of psychological test administration in neuropsychological evaluations.

Neuropsychologists are frequently presented with requests from parents, attorneys, nurse case managers, insurance representatives, school personnel, allied health professionals, family members or other interested parties who have some type of relationship with a patient or client examinee to directly observe or record the administration of psychological tests. Consequently, a number of practice concerns have been raised that include, but are not limited to, the effects on the examinee’s performance and the psychologist administering the assessment, violations of testing guidelines, the impact on standardization procedures, the appropriateness of applying test findings to normative samples established under standardized circumstances, and test security. These requests can become even more problematic and complicated when the request occurs within the adversarial process associated with the legal system, such as competency hearings, custody evaluations, divorce proceedings, civil litigation, and criminal investigations (McSweeny et al., 1998; Sweet, Grote, & Van Gorp, 2002; Duff & Fisher, 2005; McCaffrey, Fisher, Gold, & Lynch, 2005; Howe & McCaffrey, 2010).