Integrating Improved Assessments of Financial Judgment: Conceptual and Measurement Advances

Goal and Objectives: As financial exploitation of older adults increases, investigation and prosecution of these cases remains difficult for criminal justice professionals who must balance protection of older adults with their right to autonomy. Our project goal is to develop a set of new financial decision-making screening and comprehensive measures for criminal justice professionals and non-criminal justice professionals to aid in detecting and
prosecuting financial exploitation of older adults.

Objective 1: Assess the reliability and validity of new screening and comprehensive tools to evaluate financial decision making and judgment in older adults.

Objective 2: Determine the ease of use and integration of new financial judgment measures across multiple I professionals working in diverse settings.

Subjects: The total sample size will include 600 (200 for each of the three measures; screening, key informant and comprehensive) (400 older adults and 200 informants). Inclusion criteria require english speaking participants who have made a significant financial decision within the past year.

Partnerships: This interdisciplinary collaborative effort joins partners from Wayne State University, Elder Law of Michigan, Elder Abuse task forces, Adult Protective Services workers and Case Managers assigned to long term care senior residences.

Research Design and Methods: We will collect data from a variety of sources. Specifically, we will collect data from criminal justice and non- criminal justice professionals who refer participants to us as well as from the community at large. We engaged elder abuse task forces and APS, in conjunction with Sheriffs and Prosecutors because the latter told us that to achieve early identification of cases, assessments must occur across different professionals.

Analysis: State of the art reliability and validity testing will be carried out (e.g. IRT and CFA). We will obtain feedback from users of the screening scale to see how efficient and useful the screening and informant scales was. We will also track the final outcome of each case in which the screening measure was used.

Products, Reports, and Data Archiving: Our NIJ final report will include details on the interdisciplinary conceptual I advances and new measurement tools that enhance the detection of criminal cases of financial exploitation. Multiple active and passive dissemination strategies will distribute project outcomes to criminal justice
professionals, research, and the general public. Upon project completion, data will archived at the Intra University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) and available for interested parties. ca/ncf