Comparison of MMPI—2 responses of child custody and personal injury litigants.

Abstract

If you are a psychologist who conducts child custody or personal injury evaluations, how confident are you that the traditional Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2nd ed. (MMPI-2) validity scales and other potential MMPI-2 validity indicators are in fact useful for addressing the issue of response bias? This investigation contributes to the scientific database on the use of MMPI-2 validity indicators to detect response distortion. As the investigation represents empirical rather than analog data, it is of particular value to psychologists who engage in forensic assessment.The constructs of response bias (psychological) and truthfulness (legal) are not synonymous. However, as with many other

Evaluating Parenting Capacity: Validity Problems With the MMPI-2, PAI, CAPI, and Ratings of Child Adjustment.

“…Further, this positive self-presentation has a significant suppressive effect on the clinical scale scores. These findings closely replicate our earlier (unpublished) results from a previous cohort of 76 examinees (Moretti, Carr, & Cue, 2002) and extend similar re- Siegel (1996), Bathurst et al (1997), Posthuma and Harper (1998), and Bagby et al (1999) have found mean L scale scores to be somewhat elevated (t scores of 58, 56, 53, and 52.3, respectively), with elevations on K slightly higher than L in each study (t scores of 60, 58.7, 56, and 57.5, respectively). In contrast, our findings show dominant L scale elevations.…”

“…We recommend that the validity-scale results be recognized as being continuous and therefore as providing information about the degree of the positive self-presentation bias, even in cases with subcutoff elevations. We believe that results obtained on the validity scales of the MMPI-2 and other tests can be used to provide crucial information regarding an individual's approach to the assessment, which can reasonably be assumed to apply to other tests and to some extent to the interview situation as well (e.g., Otto & Collins, 1995, Posthuma & Harper, 1998. At this point, we believe that the CAPI, which was specifically designed to detect parents at risk to physically abuse children, has the best validity scales to support its use in this population.…”

“…In contrast, in the postdivorce custody literature, there have been reviews of test utilization, presentations of normative data, and examinations of positive self-presentation by parents. It is noteworthy that the reviews of test utilization have consistently indicated that the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) is the most commonly used instrument (e.g., Ackerman & Ackerman, 1997;Hagen & Castagna, 2001;Keilin & Bloom, 1986;Quinnell & Bow, 2001), that normative data on the MMPI-2 have been presented (Bagby, Nicholson, Buis, Radovanovic, & Fidler, 1999;Bathurst, Gottfried, & Gottfreid, 1997;Ollendick & Otto, 1984), and that the issue of defensive responding has been specifically addressed (Bagby et al, 1999;Bathurst et al, 1997;Medoff, 1999;Posthuma & Harper, 1998;Siegel, 1996). These authors have generally reported that MMPI-2 measures of positive selfpresentation tend to be slightly or moderately elevated in this population, although the clinical significance of the elevations has been questioned (Medoff, 1999).…”

MMPI-2 validity, clinical and content scales, and the Fake Bad Scale for personal injury litigants claiming idiopathic environmental intolerance

“…The FBS contains infrequently endorsed items with an emphasis on unauthenticated symptoms that were identified by Lees-Haley et al in a sample of florid malingers. The FBS has been validated in controlled comparison studies as an indicator of positive response bias in litigants with a variety of injury claims including pseudo posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) [40,41] and malingered neurocognitive dysfunction in mild head injury cases from motor vehicle accidents or toxic exposure [42][43][44][45][46][47][48]. A metaanalysis, including 19 controlled studies of overreporting (e.g., traumatic brain injury, PTSD, chronic pain) on the MMPI-2 commonly used validity scales and FBS, suggests that the FBS performs as well as, if not superior to, other validity scales in discriminating overreporting and comparison groups [49].…”

Use of MMPI-2 to predict cognitive effort: A hierarchically optimal classification tree analysis

“…Regarding psychological response validity measures, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2; Butcher et al, 1989) has been the most widely examined instrument in this area of research, and depending upon the SG setting, MMPI-2 profiles may represent "underreporting" or "over-reporting" of symptoms. For example, clinicians that administer the MMPI-2 as part of a hiring process (Pope et al, 2000) or in the context of custody litigation (Posthuma & Harper, 1998) may reasonably expect respondents to have characteristic underreporting validity and clinical profiles. Conversely, other studies have examined whether select MMPI-2 validity scales (e.g., the F-family : F, Fb, Fp) and clinical scales (e.g., Hs, D, Hy, Pt, Sc) may be differentially sensitive to over-reporting of symptoms in secondary gain (SG) contexts, such as personal injury litigation.…”