In the current investigation, the authors examined the diagnostic construct validity of the "Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2-Restructured Form" (MMPI-2-RF) in a patient sample. All participants were diagnosed via the "Structured Clinical Interview" for DSM-IV Axis I Disorders (SCID-I/P). The data set used in this…

Using 65 items from a mental health screening questionnaire, the History Opinion Inventory-Revised (HOI-R), the present study compared three strategies of scale construction--(1) internal (based on factor analysis), (2) external (based on empirical performance) and (3) intuitive (based on clinicians' opinion)--to predict whether 203,595 U.S. Air…

The Violence Risk Scale (VRS) uses ratings of static and dynamic risk predictors to assess violence risk, identify targets for treatment, and assess changes in risk following treatment. The VRS was rated pre- and posttreatment on a sample of 150 males, mostly high-risk violent offenders many with psychopathic personality traits. These individuals…

Common rates employed in classificatory testing are the true positive rate (TPR), false positive rate (FPR), positive predictive power (PPP), and negative predictive power (NPP). FPR and TPR are estimated from research samples representing populations to be distinguished by classificatory testing. PPP and NPP are used by clinicians to classify…

The Personality Assessment Inventory's (PAI's) ability to predict psychopathic personality features, as assessed by the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), was examined. To investigate whether the PAI Antisocial Features (ANT) Scale and subscales possessed incremental validity beyond other theoretically relevant PAI scales, optimized regression…

Four samples were used to evaluate the incremental validity of the Psychological Inventory of Criminal Thinking Styles (PICTS) General Criminal Thinking (GCT) score and Proactive (P) and Reactive (R) composite scales vis-a-vis response style in predicting disciplinary adjustment and recidivism. Purified Confusion (Cf[subscript p]) and…

The authors investigated the predictive and incremental validity of the Early Assessment Risk List for boys (EARL-20B; Augimeri, Koegl, Webster, & Levene, 2001), a structured clinical checklist designed for the professional judgment of risk for aggressive and disruptive behaviors and risk/needs factor-based management of this risk. Seventy-six…

To continue research assessing the validity of the Balloon Analog Risk Task (BART) as a measure of risk taking, the BART was administered to a nonforensic sample of individuals with varying levels of psychopathic characteristics. Construct validity of the BART was evaluated by measuring risk-taking behavior in relation to self-reported…

A sample of 119 female suicide attempters completed the Beck Scale for Suicide Ideation (BSS). Although confirmatory common factor analyses of BSS items failed to support previously hypothesized one-, two-, or three-factor models, confirmatory principal components analyses substantiated hypothesized one- and two-dimensional models. Heuristics for…

The incremental validity and clinical utility of the recently developed Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) Infrequency Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Scale (Fptsd) was examined in relation to the family of MMPI-2 F scales in distinguishing feigned post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from disability claimants with PTSD.…

The authors examined the Trauma Symptom Inventorys (TSI) ability to discriminate 88 student post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) simulators screened for genuine PTSD from 48 clinical PTSD-diagnosed outpatients. Results demonstrated between-group differences on several TSI clinical scales and the Atypical Response (ATR) validity scale.…

Postrelease recidivism data were collected on 137 male inmates released 1 to 72 months after completing the Psychological Inventory of Criminal Thinking Styles (PICTS) in follow-ups lasting 6 to 55 months. When a dichotomous measure of recidivism (0, 1+ arrests) was employed, Entitlement (En) was the only PICTS thinking-style scale to achieve…

An experimental scale for the assessment of prison violence risk among maximum security inmates was developed from a logistic regression analysis involving inmates serving parole-eligible terms of varying length (n = 1,503), life-without-parole inmates (n = 960), and death-sentenced inmates who were mainstreamed into the general prison population…

This study examined the relation between elevation of the infrequency (F) scale on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) and the classification of psychological disorders as chronic or acute in an outpatient mental health setting. MMPI-2 and clinician rating data at time of intake were considered for 158 adult patients from an…

Little research has evaluated the validity of the Coping Deficit Index (CDI) of the Rorschach Comprehensive System (CS). Because the CS Depression Index (DEPI) has frequently been found to yield false negatives, the CDI has been proposed as an alternative means of assessing social coping skills that may relate to depression. This study examined…