FAQ

KiMiss reports require no expert knowledge in order to be able to understand and interpret their results; the expert knowledge has been described in scientific publications. Besides the listing of values for the estimated Loss of child well-being, the benefit of a KiMiss report is that items are ranked by their degree of severity, with the most important or most serious items at the top. This helps youth workers, judges and other professionals to identify those items which should be treated or clarified with priority. A KiMiss report describes the loss of child well-being by means of the sections 1) current situation (subdivided into items that can be improved or are irreversible), 2) items difficult to demonstrate and 3) items from the past. If you would like to check in advance whether a KiMiss report can support you in your situation, you can view an example report.

Affirm ​​only those items that you can defend at court, at a youth welfare office, or towards a professional, and which you can present on a basis of evidence that can be accepted and confirmed by others. After affirming an item, the KiMiss instrument fades in a check box: Weak evidence: I cannot demonstrate the presence of this item sufficiently. Tick this box if you can confirm this statement, or if you fear that affirming the item may be interpreted as an attempt to slander about the other parent. A pop-up window reminds you with the following information: Tick here if you cannot demonstrate the item adequately towards third parties (court, youth welfare office, etc.). The item will then be considered separately in a report, in section 'Items difficult to demonstrate'. Use this option to prevent allegations of defamation against the other parent (see also FAQ). A KiMiss report will help you understand how outsiders will think about your situation and how big the discrepancy can be between what you experience and what others can understand.

For the variability of what has happened or has been experienced, no rule can be formulated, whether it should be assessed as something past or present - this assessment is not only subject to your own opinion, but also of third parties or experts. After affirming an item, the KiMiss instrument fades in a check box: Past relevance: This is long ago and should not be added to the current situation. Tick the box if this is true, or if you want to avoid the allegation, you 'are not be able to let the past rest'. A pop-up window reminds you with the following information: Tick here if the item has occurred so long ago that it should not be added to the current situation. The item will then be listed in a report separately, in section 'Past items' (see also FAQ). In answering the difficult question as to whether an occurrence in the past still causes a loss of child well-being, the following question often helps: regarding the child's perceptions, is it fair to claim that the occurrence does not anymore burden the child? In difficult cases, it is exactly the task of courts and involved experts to decide whether, and within what category of a KiMiss report, an item should be considered.

Affirm only those items that you can defend at court, at a youth welfare office, or towards a professional, and which you can present on a basis of evidence that can be accepted and confirmed by others. Divorce and family court cases often involve high levels of defamation and insinuation - do not contribute to this. Parent conflicts often involve distrust and suspicion - don't affirm an item carelessly, opportunistically, or based only on hate. It makes little difference to children (and even less the younger they are), whether one parent behaves badly, or whether the other parent only blames her/him to be bad; both versions will be perceived as 'real' by a child who trusts and believes in both parents (see for instance the book Divorce Poison by RA Warshak). Last but not least, you should take items like G099 seriously in its entire meaning: 'The parent has attempted to mislead, lie or to conceal information from an individual or agency conducting a custody and access investigation' (Loss of child well-being: 57%). Protect yourself against a situation where such an item would have to be applied as follows: The parent has attempted to mislead, lie or to conceal information ... by means of an intentionally defamatory KiMiss report.

A KiMiss report does not have some sort of guideline status or legal force, and youth welfare offices, family courts or other parties to the proceedings are not required to accept or follow a KiMiss report. This is particularly problematic if the report suggests the presence of neglect or even a form of child maltreatment or abuse. If the result of a KiMiss report is negated, the question arises on which basis the negation has been done. The KiMiss instrument has been developed on the basis of several thousand assessments made by both experts and affected parents; it is reproducible and has been methodologically verified and peer-reviewed. Compared to this basis of data and evidence, professionals cannot easily claim their individual opinion was superior to a finding of the KiMiss instrument. What a KiMiss report can guarantee is: a KiMiss report represents items in a structured way; they are hierarchically ordered according to their severity in a meaningful way and are described on the basis of a scientifically published method. We hope that this will help parents and professionals to better assess the living and parenting situation of children, and that the instrument will help to better understand what child well-being and what it is no longer. You can look at the structure of a KiMiss report in a report example.

The accuracy with which a Loss of child well-being can be estimated depends on how well the desciption of an item matches the true situation and how reliable the response to an item is. If both factors are correctly met, the rule of thumb is that the KiMiss instrument estimates a Loss of child well-being with an accuracy of ± 5%, in less well defined cases with an accuracy of ± 10%. In cases of doubt, for example if the Loss of child well-being is close to a threshold value, you should adopt a robust and conservative perspective and reconsider the result with a ± 10% accuracy by means of the two questions: is the conclusion of the KiMiss report still plausible if the estimated Loss of child well-being is assumed 1) to be 10% higher, 2) to be 10% lower? See also FAQ "I'm not sure which response I should tick for a certain item - what can I do?"

The EbM method underlying the KiMiss algorithm is based on summations and mean calculations. The calculations will be inaccurate if the result is calculated from only a few contributions. Therefore, if you request a report with less than three items, the web application outputs: "You have reported less than three items, a report cannot be produced in this case, we recommend assessing these items individually. Values for the Loss of child well- being of individual items can be found under www.kimiss.uni-tuebingen.de/de/2014tables.html."

Quality of life calculations allow only limited precision; calculations for a Loss of child well-being of a few percent are vague, and the practical relevance of a percentage of less than 5% is low. Therefore, if a report request relates to a Loss of child well-being of less than 5%, the web application outputs: "The Loss of child well-being is less than 5%; a report cannot be produced in this case."

This is due to the fact that items can overlap in content and such overlaps must not be counted twice in a summation. In the context of the topic 'Obstruction of parent-child contacts' for example, it can often be observed that the problem does not only concern parent-child contacts at weekends, but also parenting times in general, or the participation of the affected parent in celebrations, school matters, etc. For content overlapping situations, the individual contribution of single items on the total Loss of child well-being may not be just added up, but greater efforts are required to correct for content overlap of items. For a more detailed description of the methodological problem, see the publication of the KiMiss algorithm.

This is due to the phenomenon that perceptions are assessed differently depending on background noise. A comparison that often produces consent (and is thought-provoking) can be formulated roughly as follows: "A slap on the face weighs less heavily in a war than in peace". If we were to interview people living in war, how hard a slap on the face is, they can be expected to rate it less badly than people who do not live in war. A related law is described in neuro and sensory sciences by the so-called Weber-Fechner law: both, eyes and ears perceive a stimulus (light, volume) that is, according to a physical measurement, ten times higher as only twice as strong. This is based on a logarithmic law which has also been assumed as a conceptual basis for the KiMiss algorithm. The question does not seem to be clarified whether emotional perceptions of human beings follow the same laws as hearing and seeing. Perhaps exactly such a discrepancy between human knowledge and non- knowledge makes it clear why there is a big problem in understanding what child well-being is, and what it is not. A more detailed description of the methodological problem can be found in the KiMiss 2014 Rating.

This is due to the fact that items can overlap in content and such overlaps must not be counted twice in a summation. The KiMiss instrument evaluates the presence of items conservatively and eliminates content redundancy of items excessively. If you notice that affirming an item does not increase the estimated value of Loss of child well-being, then this is because the content relevance of the item is already represented by other items. The KiMiss instrument corrects for content overlap of items by means of the so-called Elimination-below-maximum (EbM) method which is described in the publication of the KiMiss algorithm. The contribution of a single item to the total value of Loss of child well- being is therefore not constant, but depends on the overall level of the parent conflict (see also FAQ "The contribution of a certain item to the total Loss of child well-being is lower, if I additionally affirm a serious item").

Parents who try to misuse the KiMiss instrument in order to defame the other parent expose themselves to the KiMiss diagnostics, for example through items such as G099: 'The parent has attempted to mislead, lie or to conceal information from an individual or agency conducting a custody and access investigation' produces a Loss of child well-being of 57% and thus, is relatively serious. Attempting to defame the other parent by means of the KiMiss instrument thus fails. We must realize that truth-finding in legal custody proceedings is a major problem in general: in the 2012 and 2016/17 KiMiss studies, 62% and 60% of parents reported that "the other parent demonstrably tried to influence a family court by means of deception, lying or deliberate concealment". Truth-finding must be ensured by courts and other parties to the proceedings, the KiMiss tool cannot guarantee this; it can only be used to estimate a Loss of child well-being on the basis of facts that are true. Without truth-finding by courts and other parties to the proceedings, any form of defamation is possible; this does not require the existence of an instrument.

Under a balanced parenting arrangement, the KiMiss instrument cannot advantage or disadvantage one of the parents. In a non-balanced parenting arrangement, however, probabilities shift. For example, if a child lives 90% of the time with only one parent, then that parent will also have a higher chance (more opportunities) to expose himself/herself to the items of the KiMiss instrument. This becomes even more relevant when topics such as problems with parent-child contacts or parental alienation play a role. The KiMiss instrument addresses parent conflicts with special consideration of hostile-aggressive parenting. If you miss an item, please send an email to info@kimiss-institut.de, we will try to complete the item list of the KiMiss instrument.