ASSESSING THE MMPI-BASED COOK-MEDLEY HOSTILITY SCALE - THE IMPLICATIONS OF DIMENSIONALITY

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory- (MMPI-) based Cook-Me dley Hostility scale (Cook & Medley, 1954) historically has been used to investigate links between personality factors and health outcomes. We assessed the dimensionality of 27 Cook-Medley items previously foun d to predict mortality using full-information maximum likelihood facto r analysis. The factor analyses revealed that these items serve as ind icators for several constructs, with some factors apparently reflectin g word usage rather than a meaningful psychological dimension. Our ana lyses indicate that the psychological meaning of these (sub)scales is ambiguous and differs according to the respondent's gender. The findin gs are discussed in the context of evidence to support the construct v alidity of the scale and the implications of dimensionality for making inferences concerning the link among scale scores, personality factor s, and health outcomes.