Critiquing The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory - Research Paper Example

? Personality Assessment Inventory critique Personality tests have become useful in the modern world than ever before. There are many needs that have necessitated the design of personality inventories so as to understand and categorize human behavior. One of these designed tools is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). It is the most frequently used of all the personality test tools. It has proved to be rreliable as researches have suggested; a sentiment echoed by the trained professionals who use it in identification of psychopathology and personality structure. Like every other test, the MMPI has its equal share of advantages and disadvantages. We should have a scrutiny of these factors on a target popuulation in order to understand it better. This paper is therefore a critique of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. Critiquing The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory Inventory overview The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory was designed by a psychologist and a psychiatrist, Starke R Hathaway PhD. and J.C. McKinley MD. It was researched at the University of Minnesota during the World War 1 in 1939. It has been a benchmark for personality testing ever since it was created. Over the time, there have been structural changes that have been made to the test to suit the challenges that are brought by time. It has been reconstituted to include new content scales that improve validity of the outcomes. There have also been changes in the items of measure (Marnat, 24). The resulting hybrids have been rated as the best of all other test tools. This however is not without criticism and challenges. The 1939 design used an empirical keying approach; its clinical scales were derived through selection of items endorsed by those who had been diagnosed with pathologies. It was an atheoretical theory not centering its design on any theory. Its approach allowed it to capture factors of human psychopathology that were recognized in clinical theories. The MMPI was found faulty since it had loopholes in its validity. Its control group consisted of a very small group of people mainly with similar features. Most were young, white and married from the rural Midwestern areas. It as well had problem with its terminology which was not relevant to the population that it was supposed to be used on. This led to a number of improvements. This saw the rise of the modern tool; of course after numerous changes to the original (Marnart, 27) The MMPI was revised to the MMPI-2. The new version was standardized on a national sample in 1989. The new MMPI had a bigger control group who were from more diverse backgrounds. A wide range of subscales were introduced to help in interpretation of the results. It developed 567 items and should take between one and two hours to complete. It required a sixth grade reading level. It has a shorter abbreviated version that is used for situations that cannot allow completion of the full version. It is the most used frequently used test besides the IQ and achievement tests. It was, just like the original, designed for people above the age of 18 (Marnart, 27) Its improvement led to the 1992 designing of the MMPI-A which was designed for adolescents of 14 to 18 years. It was meant to improve personality measurement in adolescents; which had been troublesome for years. The original had inadequate youth items, little appropriate norms and reporting problems. It had an adult perspective without critical adolescent issues like school. Its adult norms tended to overpathologize the adolescents who had elevations on the clinical scales. The MMPI-A was therefore a restandardization of the MMPI which was tailor made for the adolescents. It had 478 items with the original 10 clinical scales and multiple additions of supplementary and subscales. It has showed a strong test-retest reliability and validity. It drew its samples from eight schools across the U.S. it has the advantages of using adolescent norms, relevant items and has a short version. It also comes with a manual and has shown strong validity. However, it has a non representative clinical norms sample, it overlaps the measures of the clinical scales and has an irrelevant mf scale (Marnat, 28) There is also the newest version that was developed through rigorous statistical methods in 2008. This version is the reconstructed form; MMPI-2-RF released by Pearson Assessments. It produces scores on a theoretically grounded set of scales which include the RC. The RC scales are more stable and homogenous than the clinical scales used before. There are multiple published peer reviewed journals on the MMPI-2-RC scales. Its scales have the assumption that psychopathology is an additive homogenous condition. The developments on the MMPI have continued with new rationale and scales being developed every day to suit growing needs and also to improve on its test-retest validity (Marnart, 29) Uses of the MMPI It is the single most widely used measure in adult psychopathology to date. It has been employed by different institutions for different functions. It is specifically used by federal agencies that flaunt positions that require extensive responsibility for life and property. It has been used and proven by the Department of Defense, the CIA and Federal Aviation Administration who have used it over and over again to identify the suitability of the candidates for these high risk public safety jobs. It is used to assess major symptoms of social and personal dysfunctions. This has been due to its reliance and as such, clinicians can also use it as an empirical basis of their expert input and testimony. Unlike many of the others, it succesfuly assesses medical patients hence easing the design of effective treatment strategies especially chronic pain. The MMPI is the best evaluation tool for assessing the progress made by participants of substance abuse rehabilitations and programs hence help in the choice of the effective treatment approaches. It has been proven to be of unequalled insight in marriage and family guidance and counseling as well as in supporting college and career counseling and recommendation (Marnat, 33) MMPI in Relation to the Trait Theory It is important to rate the inventory based on its performance within a given theory of personality. For purposes of such, we shall review the relationship of the inventory and the trait theory. The trait theory is an approach to human personality with interest in measurement of traits of a human. These traits are the patterns of behavior, thought and emotion. The list of possible traits is unlimited however there are particular clusters that correlate together. There are many suggested rationales for measuring these personality tests however all are captured in the MMPI. It is easy to use the RC scale to tell whether one is an extrovert or an introvert. These are the two traits that feature on all trait models. When well used, the inventory can bring out the traits that are in the people subjected to it. It can show traits that have been stabe over a period of time and how they influence behavior (Marnart, 57) Research and Peer Review Literature Review Respected peer-review journals have documented the sentiments of independent behavioral psychologists and neuropsychologists. In 2008, Butcher and a number of colleagues published a paper “Psychological Injury and Law” which focused on Lees-Haley inclusion of the FBS scale to the MMPI. They supported the contribution citing it as sensitive and specific. It can identify individuals who exaggerate somatic symptoms. It is widely used in examining traits in populations with secondary gain motive like patients seeking disability. This has gone a long way in bringing out traits in the individuals that other tests cannot. In as much as Butcher et al produced evidence and hailed the FBS scale, Ben-Porath downplayed the review (Butcher et al) Auke Tellegen and Ben-Porath have also reviewed the inventory stating that the hybrid versions have failed to compare with the 1939 MMPI. They feel that the revision has affected the continuity and comparability of the new and old versions. The clinicians should understand to what extent they can interpret the scores with the new version as if it were the old without loss of validity. According to their review, there is congruence between the MMPI-2 and the MMPI code types (Tellegen and Ben-Porath) McCreary and Padilla of the University of California in their peer review also queried the difference between the minorities and Caucasians on the test scores. They stated that there could be a controversy about the inventory’s appropriateness with people from non white racial backgrounds. Blacks score about five points on average higher than whites on the inventory test. The difference shows underlying variations in values conceptions and expectations. The differences it is suggested could be reflections of socioeconomic variations rather than race (McCreary and Padilla) Conclusion In conclusion, despite all the criticism and prejudices and personal views on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, it still is regarded the best of the personality test tools. That is explainable by the Federal agencies’ choice to use it as part of their recruitment rationale. It is perhaps the only test tool that can give conclusive evidences on all the personality theories. It has been tested by time and improved by necessity to become the inventory it is today. This is a clear indication that it was not only the fruit of a psychologist and a psychiatrist but also the fruit of time, space and rigorous research. References Butcher James N, Gass, Carlton S, Cumella Edward, Kally Zina, Williams, Carolyn L, Potential For Bias in MMPI-2 Assessments Using the Fake Bad Scale (FBS), Psychological Injury And Law, September 2009, Vol. 1, Issue 3. Marnart, Gary Groth, PhD, Handbook of Psychological Assessment, John Willey and Sons, 2009 Tellegen, Auke and Ben-Porath, Code Type Comparability of the MMPI and the MMPI-2: Analysis of Recent Findings and Criticisms., Journal of Personality Assessment, 1993, Vol. 61, Issue 93. McCreary, Charles and Padilla, Eligio, MMPI Differences Among Black, Mexican-American and White Male Offenders, Journal of Clinical Psychology, 2006, Vol. 33, Issue S1 Read More