Citation

Whitman MR, Tarescavage AM, Glassmire DM, Burchett D, Sellbom M. Psychol. Assess. 2019; 31(3): 404-409.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, University of Otago.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, American Psychological Association)

DOI

10.1037/pas0000677

PMID

30520653

Abstract

Given the diversity of individuals who undergo psychological assessment, examining whether cultural bias exists in psychological assessment instruments (i.e., differential validity) is crucial. This issue occurs when a measure systematically over- or underpredicts a criterion across demographic groups or is associated with the criterion unequally across the groups. We tested the differential validity of a widely used psychological test, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)-2-Restructured Form (MMPI-2-RF), as a function of gender (male, female) and ethnicity (Caucasian, African American, and Hispanic/Latino American) in large samples of forensic psychiatric inpatients. Regression models were estimated in a multigroup framework. The analyses yielded negligible to small statistical evidence of differential validity in MMPI-2-RF scores predicting the number of future suicidal behaviors and violent behaviors in the samples. This evidence supports use of the MMPI-2-RF as a generally unbiased instrument for predicting key criteria across genders and ethnicities in a forensic psychiatric population. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Language: en