Objective Personality Assessment Notes 1/9
I. Pretreatment Planning
A. What purpose will the evaluation serve?
a. Clinicians frequently fail to obtain clear understanding of referral questions.
b. Assessment is a method for obtaining answers to questions.
c. Clarify request when necessary.
B. Common Referral Questions
a. Prognosis? (What are the chances of getting better?)
b. Current functioning? (Suicide Risk?)
c. Treatment Type?
d. Factors causing or contributing to client’s disturbance?
C. Domains needed to answer these questions.
a. Current level of functioning: strengths, limitations in intellect, memory, and other
cognitive functioning.
b. Evaluation of mood, affect, and level of emotional control.
c. Determination of events, conflicts, and needs that trigger the problematic
responses for which the patient is seeking help.
d. Narrative formulation of patient’s resources and deficits. Conceptualization made
from other domains already assessed.
II. Personality Testing (Zeit Geist)
A. History
a. 1890’s – Psychopathology Focus – Not personality and intelligence.
b. 1930-40’s – Personality, WWII, MMPI (1943)
c. 1950’s – Radical Behaviorism (No Personality)
d. Mid 1960’s-70’s – Did not believe worth learning and emphasized medication
instead of psychotherapy.
e. 1980’s to recent times – Emphasis on DSM categories denying individual
uniqueness with blanket treatments.
f. Today – Training sees importance of personality assessment in treatment
planning, as individuals are unique.
i. Managed care has decreased use of testing.
III. Testing vs. Interview
A. What advantages are there to tests vs. the clinical interview?
a. Can get unconscious information.
b. Tests assess ego functioning.
c. Can get a lot of information in a short amount of time.
d. Can get more written information than face-to-face interview.
e. Tests can be better predictors of/about DX & TX.
f. Some symptoms can be misleading and misinterpreted by the clinician.
g. Gives diverse same of behavior.
h. Norms allow comparison with others of similar demographics or conditions.
B. The clinical interview alone is not as reliable as testing plus the interview.
IV. Choosing Tests
A. What question is being intended to be answered?
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B. Who is beneficiary of the evaluation? Client, Employer, Etc.
C. Who is the audience? Who will see the report?
D. What are the potential consequences of the evaluation?
E. Test norms and does it fit the client?
F. Who is the client?
G. Are there functional deficits?
H. Reliability, Validity? Does the test do what it’s supposed to? How efficient does it do it?
V. Testing
A. Objective Testing
a. Self report or fixed response format. – MMPI-2, Millon, API
b. Look at pathology and personality
B. Projective Testing
a. Response format is indirect and usually unconscious process.
VI. Introduction to MMPI-2
A. (Most widely used objective personality test today.)
B. MMPI
a. Developed in 1943
b. Self-report
c. T or F – 567 Items
d. Normed on rural white males and females and 221 psychology patients.
e. Items written in 1943 language.
C. MMPI-2
a. Developed in 1989
b. Gold Standard for Objective personality testing.
c. Validity scales assist in understanding test taking attitudes and thus improve the
validity of the results.
d. Norms are more appropriate to general population.
e. Client population is considered in scoring.
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I. Administration of MMPI-2 & PAI
A. Develop Rapport
1. Explain rational for testing.
2. Discuss who will see results.
3. Explain why it’s in their best interest.
B. Comfortable setting
1. Proctor or examiner present.
2. Can be administered as an individual or group.
3. Be available to answer questions.
a) Refer client back to instructions.
b) Ensure client finishes test.
4. Make sure client understands instructions.
5. Discuss and provide test.
6. Have client read instructions to you.
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II. Scoring
A. Examine Client’s Score Sheet
1. Double marked?
2. Omissions? (Ask client to complete.)
3. Clearly Erased?
B. Templates – Count blackened spaces and fill in space on profile score sheet.
1. Cannot Say?
2. Lower left hand corner.
C. Score sheet
1. Adjust certain clinical raw scores based on K scale.
2. Adjustment data in table on left side.
3. Add adjustment to score from table.
D. Plot Profile
1. Fill in validity scales and graph
2. Remember K-Correction
III. Interpretation
A. Examine T-Scores – Above 65 or below 50 are significant.
IV. Validity
A. Considerations:
1. Setting or Circumstances (Why is client being tested? Family, Custody,
Employment…)
2. Instructions (Were they given in a standardized manner?)
a) If not may decrease validity.
3. Motivational Set (Is client open, cooperative, over/under reporting?)
B. MMPI-2 Validity Scales
1. See handout
C. Validity Interpretation
V. Content scales
A. Overview
1. Contain all obvious content
2. Reflect what clients want you to know.
3. Easily impacted by defensiveness and distressed profiles
4. Data supports that content scales work just as well or better than scales developed by
other approaches.
5. Content scales outperform clinical scales.
B. Advantages:
1. Summarizes how client sees current problem.
2. Normed so can compare with national samples.
3. Degree of concern/willingness of client to disclose information about problem.
C. Limitations:
1. Face valid (Client can present themselves how they want.)
2. Assess a limited range of behaviors.
3. Client must be able to remember and present information accurately.
4. Due to limited number of items and possibility of errors may reduce accuracy of
predictions.
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