PSY-33 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Trin, Malingering, Psychopathology
Keenan Lieu
Theories of Personality
Fall 2019
Cannot Say (?)
measures the number of items omitted or double endorsed; could be due to carelessness,
confusion, poor reading comprehension, indecisiveness or to avoid admitting undesirable facts
a large number of omitted numbers can lead to lower scores on various scales
the MMPI-2 manual suggests invalidating if [?] raw score > 30
Graham suggests invalidating or proceeding with caution if [?] raw score >10
if the percent of completion is <90%, the scorer should consider invalidating the protocol
What to do when [?] > 10:
Determine on which scales the omissions occurred
Are omissions after item #370 (clinical scales are finished after item 370)?
Is there a theme to the omitted items?
Interpret the unaffected scales
VRIN: Variable Response Inconsistency Scale
developed to provide an indication of the tendency to respond to items inconsistently or
randomly
mainly used to help understand an elevation in the F scale
scored using 67 item pairs with either similar or opposite content
T score > 80 (raw score > 13) indicates inconsistent responding that invalidates
a completely random response set produces a T-score of ~98.
oddly, an all True or all False response set produces T-scores of ~50.
malingering or those honestly admitting serious pathology will typically have near
average T-scores
TRIN: True Response Inconsistency Scale
developed to identify a tendency to respond inconsistently to the MMPI items by giving true or
false responses indiscriminately
should be used in conjunction with the VRIN and F scales
scored using 20 item pairs with opposite content
T score > 80 (raw score > 13) indicates inconsistent responding with a true bias that invalidates
the protocol acquiescent approach!
T score > 80 (raw score < 5) indicates inconsistent responding with a false bias that invalidates
the protocol non-acquiescent approach!
F: Infrequency Scale
60 item scale within the first 361 items; developed to detect deviant or atypical ways of
responding to the test items
items were endorsed by fewer than 10% of the normative sample in some direction (ex. If #4 has
5% endorsed true and 95% endorsed false, it counts as a point on the F scale when endorsed in
the direction of true)
high scores associated with elevated clinical scales
if F is highly elevated but VRIN and TRIN are not, client is likely malingering!
Document Summary
> 10: the mmpi-2 manual suggests invalidating if [?] raw score > 30. Graham suggests invalidating or proceeding with caution if [?] raw score >10 if the percent of completion is <90%, the scorer should consider invalidating the protocol. T score > 80 (raw score > 13) indicates inconsistent responding that invalidates. T score > 80 (raw score > 13) indicates inconsistent responding with a true bias that invalidates the protocol acquiescent approach! T score > 80 (raw score < 5) indicates inconsistent responding with a false bias that invalidates the protocol non-acquiescent approach! 60 item scale within the first 361 items; developed to detect deviant or atypical ways of responding to the test items items were endorsed by fewer than 10% of the normative sample in some direction (ex. F-fb > 20 something odd is occurring; attention needed. Unsure which half of the protocol may be valid, but can scales from the first half.
