OPERATING CHARACTERISTICS OF 6 RESPONSE DISTORTION INDICATORS FOR THEPERSONALITY-ASSESSMENT INVENTORY

The characteristics of six different indicators of response distortion on the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI; Morey, 1991) were evalu ated by having college students complete the PAI under positive impres sion management, malingering, and honest responding conditions. The si x indicators were the PAI Positive Impression (PIM) and Negative Impre ssion (NIM) scales, the Malingering and Defensiveness Indexes, and two discriminant functions, one developed by Cashel and the other by Roge rs. Protocols of students asked to malinger were compared with those o f actual clinical patients, while protocols of students asked to manag e their impression in a positive direction were compared with those of students asked to respond honestly. Comparisons between groups were a ccomplished through the examination of effect sizes and receiver opera ting characteristic (ROC) curves. All six indicators demonstrated the ability to distinguish between actual and feigned responding. The Roge rs function was particularly effective in identifying malingering. The Cashel function was less effective than other measures in identifying positive impression management, although it appears to also have prom ise as an indicator of malingering.