Personality Assessment Without Borders: Adaptation of the MMPI-2 Across Cultures

Abstract

In contemporary psychology, personality assessment knows few national or cultural boundaries. Psychological tests developed in one country are often translated and adapted into cultures that might appear to be greatly different from the country of origin. In this article, I address the factors that are important to international test adaptation and examine problems that can adversely affect cross-cultural test research programs. I address qualities important for verifying the accuracy and adequacy of cross-cultural assessment. I review the extensive adaptation of the MMPI (Hathaway & McKinley, 1940) and MMPI-2 (Butcher, Dahlstrom, Graham, Tellegen, & Kaemmer, 1989), the most frequently used personality measure. I highlight several contemporary research trends in international personality assessment.

Assessment of Autism in Community Settings: Discrepancies in Classification

“…Often assessors utilize measures that are not well validated for the population, or tools are translated from English without regard for the inherent loss of psychometric properties; many translated tests have little to no research supporting their use with Spanish-speaking U.S. residents (Fernandez et al 2007). Translated tests may neglect to ensure that an item has psychological as well as linguistic equivalence (Butcher 2004). Translation alone is insufficient justification for the use of a particular test and does not indicate sufficient validity or reliability (see AERA, APA, and NCFM 1999;Valdés and Figueroa 1994).…”

Le lauree honoris causa per gli 80 anni dell'Università degli Studi di Firenze

“…As recently noted by Butcher (2004), during the last half of the 20 th Century, the United States was involved in great political conflict with several nations -Cuba, Iran, the former Soviet Union, and China -governments that held opposite political, cultural, or religious values. During this time, it was not uncommon for international news to feature a high degree of political conflict involving a great amount of anti American rhetoric and actions -overt aggressive acts such as the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba and the taking of American hostages at the American embassy in Iran.…”

“…Bernal del Riesgo in Cuba (Quevedo & Butcher in press), Reda in Italy (Butcher & Pancheri 1976), and Abe in Japan (Abe 1959) were among the early personality assessment psychologists who pioneered cross-cultural test adaptation with the MMPI. A great deal has been written about the use of the MMPI/MMPI-2 in international applications (Arbisi & Butcher 2004;Butcher 2004;Butcher & Pancheri 1976;Butcher 1996;Butcher, Derksen, Sloore & Sirigatti 2003;Butcher, Cheung, & Lim 2003).…”

Using Cognitive Interviewing for the Semantic Enhancement of Multilingual Versions of Personality Questionnaires

“…This led to differences in meaning and consequently differential psychological impact on participants in the two language versions. van de Vijver and Jeanrie (2004), Butcher (2004), and Butcher, Cheung, and Lim (2003) also recognize the importance of the comparability of psychological impact of items in reaching full equivalence between them. We identified 5 errors that affect connotative equivalence between items: 1) wrong translation of words with multiple meaning, 2) composed words, 3) words nonexistent in TL, 4) idioms and 5) different magnitude.…”