The Need for Standardization of Forensic Anthropological Case Reporting Practices in the United States

Background/Objectives: Forensic anthropological analyses and reports include diverse information that may help in establishing identifications, cause or manner of death determinations, taphonomic alterations, or other circumstances involving decedents. However, within forensic anthropology in the United States, there remains no unifying standardization for analyzing cases or writing reports that can be used independent of work environment, education, or case circumstance, which is potentially problematic for a field with 32.4% of practitioners being sole practitioners, as reported here. While some broad “best practice” guidelines exist, they do not provide a significant, nuanced, or unifying set of methodological, terminology, or reporting standards. Methods: In order to explore whether a lack of standardization is problematic in forensic anthropology, a survey was conducted to explore reporting practices, followed standards, and personal experiences regarding overall practices that lead to case reports. Results: Among the 106 respondents, there were multiple areas of agreement, which suggests that unofficial reporting standardization exists within the field. Further, 71.3% agreed that standardization in case reporting is important, and 60.3% supported the adoption of universal standards. However, other areas, such as cognitive bias, terminology, education, and training experiences, varied among respondents. Standardization is important, as 23.2% reported that their laboratory lacks a Standard Operating Procedure; 28.0% reported that their laboratory lacks reporting guidelines; and 24.4% reported that their casework was not peer reviewed. Discussion/Conclusions: The findings from this study suggest that overarching standardization for report writing, terminology, and methodology should be created to provide a baseline reference for all forensic anthropologists, regardless of work context and educational background.