The context of clinical judgment: The effect of resource availability on judgments of amenability to treatment in juvenile offenders

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Abstract
Conclusion: The present study demonstrates that the contextual factors of resource availability and agency setting may have a significant, systematic relationship to assessments of potential treatment outcome. The value of this finding is not to debunk the idea of the objective clinician one more time but, instead, to provide leads regarding the possible factors worth further investigation in constructing models of clinical judgment. We are aware that clinicians do not necessarily “optimize” (Simon, 1976) when making treatment recommendations, but we know very little about the influences that structure the clinician's compromises in clinical judgment. A clearer understanding of this judgment process may come, however, as a result of applying a model that considers the clinician as a practitioner of human judgment, much of which is an adapative response to contextual influences (Hogarth, 1981; Nisbett & Ross, 1980).

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