Macarthur Competence Assessment Tool for Clinical Research

by Paul S. Appelbaum, Thomas Grisso

The MacCAT-CR provides a structured format for capacity assessment that is adaptable to the particulars of any given research project. With the introduction of the MacCAT-CR, researchers enrolling human participants in their studies have available for the first time a reliable and valid means of assessing their potential subject's capacity to consent to participation. The MacCAT-CR can typically be administered in 15-20 minutes. Beginning with project-specific disclosures to potential participants, the MacCAT-CR measures the four generally accepted components of decision-making understanding, appreciation, reasoning, and the ability to express a choice. Quantification of subjects' responses permits comparisons across subjects and subject groups, and allows the MacCAT-CR to be used for not only for screening individual participants but also for conducting research on the characteristics of subject populations and for assessing the effectiveness of interventions designed to i

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Paul Stuart Appelbaum is an American psychiatrist and a leading expert on legal and ethical issues in medicine and psychiatry.
Appelbaum has been Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Psychiatry, Medicine, and Law, and Director, Division of Law, Ethics, and Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons since 2006. Appelbaum was President of the American Psychiatric Association (2002-2003) and President of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law (1995-1996).

Appelbaum is a member of the Standing Committee on Ethics of the World Psychiatric Association, and Chair of the APA's DSM Steering Committee. He was the Fritz Redlich Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences; he was given the Isaac Ray Award of the American Psychiatric Association for "outstanding contributions to forensic psychiatry and the psychiatric aspects of jurisprudence." Appelbaum has been elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, and is a Hastings Center Fellow.

Appelbaum is credited with conceptualizing the idea of the therapeutic misconception in which subjects in medical research studies misunderstand the primary purpose of their contact with the research team as treatment.