Faculty Articles

Comparison of the MMPI-2 Restructured Demoralization Scale, Depression Scale, and Malingered Mood Disorder Scale in Identifying Non-Credible Symptom Reporting in Personal Injury Litigants and Disability Claimants.

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Clinical Neuropsychologist

ISSN

1385-4046

Publication Date

1-2009

Abstract

A known groups design compared the ability of the 24-item MMPI-2 Restructured Clinical Demoralization Scale (RCd), the 57-item Depression Scale (Scale 2), and the 15-item Malingered Mood Disorder Scale (MMDS) to identify non-credible symptom response sets in 84 personal injury litigants and disability claimants compared to 77 non-litigating head-injured controls. All three scales showed large effect sizes (>0.80). Scale 2 was associated with the largest effect size (2.19), followed by the MMDS (1.65), and the RCd (0.85). Logistic regression analyses revealed that a cutscore of > or =28 on the 57-item Scale 2 was associated with high specificity (96.1%) and sensitivity (76.2%), while a cutscore of > or =16 on the 24-item RCd was less accurate (87% specificity and 50% sensitivity). Cutscores for the MMDS were not calculated as they were reported in a previous study. Results indicated that like the 15-item MMDS, the 57-item MMPI-2 Scale 2 may provide another empirically derived index with known error rates upon which examiners may rely to investigate hypotheses relative to exaggeration of illness-related behavior and impression management in forensic contexts involving PI litigants and disability claimants.

DOI

10.1080/13854040801969524

Volume

23

Issue

1

First Page

153

Last Page

166

Link to Full Text
Peer Reviewed

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