MINNESOTA MULTIPHASIC PERSONALITY INVENTORY
This paper presented an overview of the MMPI-2, the restandardized version of the original MMPI instrument designed to assess adult psychopathology. It was noted that the test is comprehensive in nature consisting of 567 true-false items which are assessed in terms of 10 basic clinical scales, 7 validity scales, 15 Content Scales, 27 content component scales, 18 supplementary scales, 3 social introversion scales, 28 Harris-Lingoes subscales and 10 special or setting-specific indices. It provides seven report options.
The MMPI-2 is most frequently used for clinical patients with psychiatric symptoms and is applied in a variety of settings including psychiatric and/or medical settings, court room settings, and business settings. The instrument was normed using 1,138 males and 1,462 females drawn from diverse geographic regions and communities across the United States and included both clinical and non-clinical groups.
Strengths of the instrument are strong reliability and face validity and treatment applications. Weaknesses include some psychometric difficulties with the newer scales, the need for supplementary information to support report patterns, heterogeneity of item content within the scales, overlapping items across the different scales, low cultural relevance, the atheoretical nature of its development, and difficulties associated with using computer interpretations.
Based on an extensive review of its psychometric, developmental and structural properties, the MMPI-2 was judged to be a relatively strong and comprehensive assessment of adult psychopathology but it was noted that it did have difficulties that needed future correction.
The purpose of this paper is to provide a broad overview and critical analysis of the MMPI (current edition is the MMPI-2). To this end, the paper will describe the most current version of the test and its purpose. The paper will also ...