A PERSPECTIVE ON DEVELOPMENTS IN ASSESSING PSYCHOPATHOLOGY - A CRITICAL-REVIEW OF THE MMPI AND MMPI-2

Many concerns have been raised about the Minnesota Multiphasic Persona lity Inventory (MMPI), but the emphasis on continuity during its revis ion precluded addressing many of these problems in the new MMPI-2. In this review, problems with the MMPI and MMPI-2 are explicated in an ef fort to promote more informed use of this and other tests of psychopat hology. Major theoretical concerns include the lack of a consistent me asurement model, heterogeneous scale content, and suspect diagnostic c riteria. Serious structural problems include the overlap among scales, lack of cross-validation of the scoring keys, inadequacy of measures of response styles, and suspect norms. Six minor problems and new issu es for the MMPI-2 are also discussed. It is concluded that although th e MMPI-2 is an improvement over the MMPI, both are suboptimal from the perspective of modern psychometric standards for the assessment of ps ychopathology.