Chapter One

CHAPTER 1

Objective Personality Assessment using the MMPI-2 and MMPI-A

Research began in 1939 (Hathaway & McKinley) to develop an inventory to aid in assessing and diagnosing patients with mental disorders
MMPI has become the most widely used and researched objective personality inventory in the world
Used in many settings (psychiatric clinics, hospitals, medical settings, adolescents, inmates, alcohol/drug treatment units, military personnel, applicants for highly responsible positions)
1940s-50s first translations; by 1989 there were over 140 MMPI translations in 46 countries
Successful because:
useful and practical technique for assessing individuals reporting mental health symptoms and problems,
many research studies document its reliability/validity,
useful predictive information in a cost-effective manner,
detection of invalid records
simple language, simple administration & scoring
clinical familiarity of profile variables
reliable evaluations
possible to evaluate the credibility of a person’s self report (using validity scales)
person’s score can be interpreted using norms

Development of the MMPI
- Hathaway & McKinley believe self-report provides useful information
- Patients who endorsed similar items/symptoms on the MMPI are diagnostically more alike than different
- Individuals endorsing more symptoms of a particular kind are viewed as experiencing a more serious problem
- Empirical Scale-Construction strategy: any item on a scale was assigned to that scale only if it objectively discriminated a given criterion group (e.g. individuals with depression) from their normative sample (e.g. healthy participants)
- “Blind/Dustbowl Empiricism”- Hathaway & McKinley’s strategy of classifying items with constructs based solely on comparing the responses of normal subjects with groups of well-classified patients (see pg. 3)

Revisions of the MMPI
- changes in the DSM,
- items become out of date, some items were objectionable,
- original normative sample was white, rural subjects from Minnesota, while instrument was used across the US with broadly diverse clients
- 1982, revision of MMPI was not to radically change it, but to modernize and restandardize an instrument of demonstrated reliability and validity
MMPI Restandardization Committee’s goals:
delete objectionable, nonworking, outdated items, and replace with items addressing contemporary clinical problems and applications
to ensure continuity with the original instrument, keep the MMPI validity, standard, and several supplementary scales virtually intact
develop new scales to address problems not covered in the original MMPI
collect new, randomly solicited samples of adults and adolescents, representative of the US population, to develop age-appropriate norms
develop new normative distributions that would better reflect clinical problems
collect a broad range of clinical data for evaluating changes to be made in the original scales and for validating the new scales

Development of the MMPI-2
- normative sample of 2,600 subjects (1,462 women & 1,138 men)
- balanced for gender and demographic characteristics (e.g. ethnic group)
- a number of normative and clinical studies provided validation for the MMPI-2 standard scales and the new content scales. Studies were conducted with: inpatient psychiatric facilities, alcohol treatment settings, mothers at risk or child abuse, outpatients in marital distress, antisocial personalities, posttraumatic stress-disordered veterans, older men, military personnel, college students
- Present-day subjects tend to endorse more items in the pathological direction, producing higher mean scores. This is likely due to the change in test administration (originally item omissions were allowed, now they are discouraged)
- Original MMPI norms developed using a linear T-score transformation
o T-score distributions: mean of 50, standard deviation of 10
o Original MMPI: consider T score of 70 a cutoff for “clinically significant” (95th percentile)
o MMPI-2: T score of 65 (92nd percentile) is the optimal score level for separating known clinical groups from the normative sample; indicates “clinical range”
- MMPI-2 content scales assess:
o Symptomatic behaviour (Anxiety, Fears, Obsessiveness, Depression, Health concerns, Bizarre mentation)
o Personality factors (Type A behaviour, Cynicism)
o Externalizing behaviour (Anger, Antisocial practices)
o Negative self view (Low self esteem)
o Clinical problem areas (Family problems, Work interference, Negative treatment indicators)

Development of the MMPI-A
- Experimental “Form TX” for adolescents, to see if a separate version of the MMPI for adolescents would prove useful and valid
- 704-item Form TX administered to 815 girls and 804 boys in normative sample, ages 14-18, as well as in an extensive clinical evaluation study
- new items added to address adolescent problems and behaviours (e.g. attitudes about school and parents, peer-group influence, eating problems)
- items about youthful behaviours that were worded in the past tense in MMPI-2, were changed to present tense for MMPI-A

Table 1.1. (pg. 10) Reasons for Acceptance of the MMPI-2 and MMPI-A in Psychological Assessment

easy to administer, available in booklets, cassette tape, computer administration; takes 1-1.5 hours to complete
individuals self-administer, answering T or F; sixth grade reading level
many foreign language versions of the MMPI-2 and MMPI-A are in use
relatively easy to score (and computer scoring available)
appraises test-taking attitudes of the client
objectively interpreted instrument (empirically validated scales possess clearly established meanings)
good reliability
clear, valid descriptions of people’s problems, symptoms, personality characteristics; scale elevations and code-type descriptions provide useful terminology for clinicians
enable practitioners to predict future behaviours and responses to different treatment approaches
provides a valuable method for providing test feedback about personality characteristics, symptoms, etc. to clients