MMPI-2 short form proposal: CAUTION.
The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) is widely used in neuropsychology, though its length (567 items) is sometimes prohibitive. This study investigated some psychometric characteristics of the 180-item version of the MMPI-2 () in order to delineate its strengths, limitations, and appropriate scope of clinical application. Limited reliability and poor predictive accuracy were recently reported for many of the MMPI-2 short-form scales in a study that used 205 brain-injured patients. In the present investigation, we used a psychiatric sample (N=186) with normal neurological findings to examine short-form accuracy in predicting basic scale scores, profile code types, identifying high-point scales, and classifying scores as pathological (T>/=65) or normal-range. The results suggest that, even as applied to neurologically normal individuals, the proposed short form of the MMPI-2 is unreliable for predicting clinical code types, identifying the high-point scale, or predicting the scores on most of the basic scales. In contrast, this short form can be used to predict whether the full-scale scores fall within the pathological range (T>/=65). These findings suggest that clinicians might be able to salvage a small amount of information from the shortened (180-item) version of the MMPI-2 when MMPI-2 protocols are incomplete. However, clinicians should not use a standard interpretive approach with this test, and routine clinical application is unwarranted. Future evaluations of short-form validity should provide a more detailed examination of individual protocols, including an analysis of the frequency of accurate prediction of full-form scores.
Neuropsychology Division, Psychology Service (116-B), Veterans Affairs Medical Center, 1201 N.W. 16th Street, Miami, FL 33125, USA. gass.carlton@miami.va.gov
Carlton S
CS
Gass
Camille
C
Gonzalez
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003951:Diagnostic Errors; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008950:MMPI; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D008875:Middle Aged; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results