UTILITY OF MMPI-2 INDICATORS OF RESPONSE DISTORTION - RECEIVER OPERATING CHARACTERISTIC ANALYSIS

Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was used to evaluate 11 Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) indicators o f response distortion. College students who chose to simulate malinger ing or defensive responding were offered a cash incentive for avoiding detection. The responses of malingerers were compared with those of d efendants undergoing pretrial evaluation and general psychiatric inpat ients. The responses of defensive students were compared with those of students who responded under standard instructions. Area under the RO C curve (AUG) provided the index of discriminative power. In the detec tion of malingering, F, F - K and, in 1 of 2 comparisons, F(p) produce d significantly larger AUCs than other indices. Differences among indi cators of defensiveness were generally small. However, the performance of the S scale was promising, whereas F - K performed significantly w orse than several other indices.