“Departures from MMPI–2 empirical traditions: The fake bad scale, restructured clinical scales, and the MMPI–2–RF.
By Butcher, James N.
Butcher, James N., (2011). A beginner’s guide to the MMPI-2 (3rd ed.), (pp. 175-194). Washington, DC, US: American Psychological Association, xi, 257 pp.
A person being introduced to the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory—2 (MMPI–2) for the first time may be confused by two MMPI–2-labeled products available for use: the MMPI–2 and the MMPI–2—Restructured Form (MMPI–2–RF). These are very different assessment instruments with different scales and highly different research backgrounds. The MMPI–2–RF is made up of a subset of 338 items from the MMPI–2 item pool and relies on a number of new scales that have been the subject of considerable controversy when they first appeared as supplemental measures on MMPI–2. In this chapter, I describe the development of the MMPI–2–RF and then explain why I do not recommend using the instrument.”
Posts Tagged ‘MMPI-RF’
Jim Butcher Reviews the MMPI-RF in his new 2011 Book
Tuesday, February 15th, 2011Butcher’s New Article: A Great Historical Review of Personality Assessment
Thursday, April 15th, 2010Jim Butcher has a new article which includes a great historical review of personality assessment. He goes back to “…the Old Testament when Gideon used observations of his men trembling with fear as well as observations of how they chose to drink water from a stream as a means of selecting soldiers for battle…Other early efforts to evaluate personality can be found in the work of Carl Jung (1907), who studied associations to words in order to evaluate a person’s thought processes and personality…The U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a predecessor to the present Central Intelligence Agency, performed extensive psychological evaluations on persons who were to be assigned to secret overseas missions. The program, supervised by Henry Murray, evaluated more than 5000 candidates for special duty assignment. The assessment team used more than one hundred different psychological tests and specially designed procedures to perform the evaluations. The operations of this extensive assessment program were described after the war, when the project was declassified (Off. Strat. Serv. Assess. Staff 1948) [see also a review by Handler (2001) for a discussion of the OSS]. The military service implemented several programs in which tests such as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) were used in personnel selection for positions…”
“Research on the MMPI-2 and MMPI-A continues to this day. More than 19,000 articles and books have been published on the MMPI, the MMPI-2, and MMPI-A.”
Dr. Butcher takes us up to new developments and missteps such as the MMPI-RF. He summarizes the data showing the MMPI-RF was ill conceived and is not an improvement over the MMPI-2:
“…critics of the RC Scales, including the current author, have been resolute in descriptions of their limitations and the underlying theory and methodology that led to their creation (see Butcher &Williams 2009)…Several problems have been reported with the RC Scales. The theoretical model to develop the scales has been questioned (Butcher &Williams 2009, Gordon 2006, Nichols 2006, Ranson et al. 2009). In addition, the majority of the RC scales do not address the personality constructs from the original MMPI clinical scales but are simply redundant measures of several other MMPI-2 Content and Supplemental Scales (Caldwell 2006, Greene et al. 2009, Nichols 2006, Rogers et al. 2006, Rouse et al. 2008). The RC Scales show a low sensitivity to mental health problems (Binford & Liljequist 2008, Butcher et al. 2006, Cumella et al. 2009, Gucker et al. 2009, Megargee 2006, Rogers &Sewell 2006, Wallace & Liljequist 2005)…”
Jim Butcher concludes with this important warning:
“Assessment psychologists need to be aware that many of the available personality assessment measures are owned and managed by commercial rather than scientific organizations and need to be alert that commercial interests can sometimes “prevail over scientific needs” (Adams 2000).”
Personality Assessment from the Nineteenth to the Early Twenty-First Century: Past Achievements and Contemporary Challenges
James N. Butcher
Annu. Rev. Clin. Psychol. 2010. 6:1–20
The Annual Review of Clinical Psychology is online
at clinpsy.annualreviews.org
MMPI Expert Dave Nichols Reviews the MMPI-RF on Listserv
Tuesday, February 9th, 2010Dave Nichols gave me permission to copy his recent post to a Rorschach Listserv. This is a great response, typical of Dave.
Dr. Edelson writes: “My first course of action in this situation would be to administer the MMPI-2 and/or MMPI-RF.”
Although Dr. Edelson may well not intend it so, her statement could be misleadingly read to indicate a rough equivalence between the MMPI-2 and the MMPI-2-RF. This would be unfortunate. The MMPI-2-RF is only tenuously related to the MMPI-2, amounting largely to the two tests sharing 338 items and the 1989 Restandardization norms. The use of the familiar MMPI acronym in the MMPI-2-RF, while understandable as a means of commercial promotion given the established reputation of the MMPI/MMPI-2, risks (or intends?) distraction from the differences between the two forms. These are substantial, including the elimination of the 10 standard Clinical Scales from the RF, and their substitution by the new Restructured Clinical (RC) scales.
A close examination of the literature of the MMPI-2-RF and the RC scales will reveal a level of arrogance and sloppiness in their construction that some may find disconcerting.
Arrogance: Rather than taking the necessary pains to fully describe the development of each of the 28 new scales (out of 50) in the MMPI-2-RF for the benefit of customers, users and, especially, researchers, the authors of the new form state: “In the following we do not report the particulars of scale derivation in the same detail as we have provided for the RC scales (noting, as we did in the case of the RC scales, that ultimately what is most important is the results, the content, structure, correlates, and functions of each new scale). Instead we offer a narrative summary.” (Tellegen & Ben-Porath, 2008, MMPI-2-RF Technical Manual, p. 18)
Possible translations: 1) Trust us. 2) None of your business.
Sloppiness: One possible reason for avoiding the detailed description of the development of these 28 new RF scales is the sloppiness that was evident in these authors’ previous description of the development of the RC scales. Examples:
1) Their failure to provide in the RC Monograph (2003) a complete scoring key for the preliminary Demoralization scale (Dem), the version of the scale used in their factor analyses of the original Clinical Scales in order to identify a core construct for each (Step 2).
2) Their failure to confirm the results of these analyses after having dropped 5 items from Dem and added 6 new items to create the revised and final version of the Demoralization scale (RCd).
3) The contamination that resulted from appending Dem to the items of Scales 2 and 7, respectively, in their Step 2, after having previously recruited the Dem items exclusively from these same two scales in Step 1, thereby essentially ruling out any items overlapping Dem and either of Scales 2 or 7 as candidates for the latter scales’ core constructs. Unlike the Step 2 procedures followed to determine the core constructs of Scales 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, & 9, applying the same procedure to Scales 2 & 7 would have the effect of extracting the very same factor these scales had earlier been recruited to enlist!
4) Their failure to factor the final RC scales in any of their developmental samples to confirm that the core construct for each scale as embodied in the seed scales selected from each parent Clinical Scale survived as the dominant factor in its RC counterpart, or at least to report such analyses.
More extensive critical analysis of the RC scales and, by extension, the MMPI-2-RF, may be found in: Nichols (2006). The trials of separating bath water from baby: A review and critique of the MMPI–2 Restructured Clinical scales. Journal of Personality Assessment, 87, 121-138; Rouse, Greene, Butcher, Nichols, & Williams (2008). What do the MMPI–2 Restructured Clinical scales reliably measure? Answers from multiple research settings. Journal of Personality Assessment, 90, 435-442; Greene, Rouse, Butcher, Nichols, & Williams (2009). The MMPI–2 Restructured Clinical (RC) scales and redundancy: Response to Tellegen, Ben-Porath, and Sellbom. Journal of Personality Assessment, 91, 222-226; and in Ranson, Nichols, Rouse, & Harrington (2009). Changing or replacing an established psychological assessment standard: Issues, goals, and problems with special reference to recent developments in the MMPI-2. In J. N. Butcher (Ed.), Oxford Handbook of Personality Assessment (pp. 112-139). New York: Oxford University Press.
Dave Nichols
Is the new MMPI-RF Really an MMPI? Is it better?
Thursday, January 21st, 2010Don’t use the MMPI-RF when an MMPI-2 is required. They are not the same test. In fact, the MMPI-RF has poor sensitivity to psychopathology and is a poor diagnostic instrument. When the MMPI-RC scales first came out, I was very critical of them. I had a hard time getting my paper published. I had to fight with Psych. Reports and I won. The editor agreed to publish it finally in 2006 over the reviewers unanimous criticism of it. Later Jim Butcher and Carolyn Williams wrote (2009) “Gordon (2006) indicated that the RC Scales are based on false assumptions about psychopathology (i.e. that consistent items are needed to assess all psychopathologies), pointing to complex diagnostic conditions like Hysteria, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and Borderline Personality Disorder that are better understood with a psychodynamic formulation recognizing internal conflicts and contradictions. He indicates that a simplistic behavioral approach with an insistence on more internally consistent and distinct scales does not produce more external validity or useful measures for many of the complex disorders found in clinical practice.”
The MMPI RC scales became the main clinical scales of the MMPI-RF. Now most the leading MMPI experts agree that the MMPI-RF is a flawed test. So stick with the MMPI-2.