Exploring the psychometric properties and construct validity of the MCMI-III anxiety and avoidant personality scales.
The Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI; Millon, 1983) is a commonly used self-report instrument designed to aid in the assessment of Axis I and Axis II disorders. Concerns have been expressed regarding the procedures used in the normative research for the current version of the MCMI (MCMI-III; Millon, 1994) leading to a call for additional validity research on the MCMI-III (Retzlaff, 1996). In this study, we investigated the psychometric properties of the MCMI-III's Anxiety and Avoidant personality scales in a sample of patients diagnosed with Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) anxiety disorders. Our results suggest that the MCMI-III Avoidant scale is reliable (r =.89) and it was found to demonstrate appropriate convergent and divergent validity with other self-report measures. The MCMI-III Anxiety scale also showed adequate reliability (r =.78); however, our findings raise some concerns about the discriminant validity of this scale. A scale composed of the MCMI-III core anxiety items was found to have better discriminant validity. These findings are consistent with those reported by other researchers regarding the relationship between self-report measures of anxiety, avoidance, and depression. We conclude that the MCMI-III measures of anxiety and avoidance are consistent with other measures of these constructs and may provide valuable clinical information in this regard.
Blais
Mark A
MA
Department of Psychiatry, Blake-11, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, 55 Fruit Street, Boston, MA 02114, USA. Mblais@partners.org
Holdwick
Daniel J
DJ
McLean
Renee Y S
RY
Otto
Michael W
MW
Pollack
Mark H
MH
Hilsenroth
Mark J
MJ
D001008:Anxiety Disorders / Q000145:classification / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D039721:Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; D006769:Hospitals, General / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D007406:Interview, Psychological; D008404:Massachusetts; D010554:Personality Disorders / Q000145:classification / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D010555:Personality Inventory / Q000592:standards*; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards