The validity of certain measures of maladjustment in an Army Special Training Center.

A Study of Active Duty Military Personnel With the MMPI-2

“…One important early use of the MMPI involved the selection of military personnel for special duty assignments such as aviation training (Cerf, 1947;Fulkerson, Freud, & Raynor, 1958;Fulkerson & Sells, 1958;Garetz & Tierney, 1962;Geist & Boyd, 1980;Goorney, 1970;Jennings, 1948) or nuclear submarine training and naval diver training (Cook & Wherry, 1949;Weybrew, 1974Weybrew, , 1978Weybrew & Noddin, 1979). The MMPI has also been used extensively in evaluating training (Jensen & Rotter, 1947) and in predicting training failures (Altus, 1945;Altus & Bell, 1945;Bloom, 1977;Callan, 1972;Crook, 1944;Ekman, Friesen, & Lutzker, 1962;Lachar, 1974). Two additional areas of research in which the MMPI was widely used in the military service involved: (a) studies on the effects of harsh environmental conditions on human adjustment, such as with Naval personnel wintering in the Antarctic (Blackburn, Shurley, & Natani, 1973;Butcher & Ryan, 1974) and remote Alaskan stations (McCollum, 1951); and (b) the effects of imprisonment in a prisoner of war camp on later psychological adjustment (Sutker, Winstead, Goist, Malow, & Allain, 1986;Ursano, Wheatley, Sledge, Rahe, & Carlson, 1986;Wheatley & Ursano, 1982).…”

The validity of a general information test for certain groups of Army illiterates.

“…Other than the Army Wechsler Mental Ability Scale, Form B, no officially sanctioned Army tests existed which could be used in the individual testing of these individuals whose average verbal intelligence quotient, as determined by the Wechsler, was about 67. Tests were devised by the writers or adapted from previously published ones [3,5] to measure certain adjustment factors; the Terman Vocabulary Test was incorporated in the battery of individual tests; finally, the AB Information was also included as a supplement to the Army Wechsler and the Terman as measures of verbal aptitude.…”

“…The data educed in this study, that for the Terman Vocabulary [4], and that for the Army Wechsler [2] show that there is a strong need for a general aptitude test standardized on the dullest of the "normal" groups, the borderline feebleminded and the definitely feebleminded groups. Aptitude in this instance would have to be an elastic term which would include adjustment factors [3,5] since the problem of diagnosis of feeblemindedness in individuals who have I.Q. 's between 50 and 80 is, in the opinion of the writers, primarily contingent upon the degree of neurotic or psychopathic trends that are manifested.…”

The adjustment of Army illiterates.

“…Twenty-four of the 87 questions in the original four tests of adjustment were retained, the basis of selection being the discrimination shown in successive item analyses. Six of these items were retained from each of the original four tests of adjustment, Army Adjustment, Concentrated Bell, Hypochrondria and Paranoia (3). Six more items were obtained from an item analysis of the Depression scale of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (7), though these were shortened and changed, somewhat in wording.…”