Citation

Beal D, Melowski F, Hamilton A. Suicide Life Threat. Behav. 1984; 14(4): 270-274.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1984, American Association of Suicidology, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

6528346

Abstract

Paulson, Afifi, Chaleff, Liu, & Thomason (1975) developed a series of special subscales from the MMPI for identifying individuals who are at risk for child-abusive behavior. The initial results were highly encouraging, with the scales correctly identifying 93 to 100% of the subjects in their sample. Unfortunately, Paulson et al. (1975) failed to cross-validate their findings before publication. When the six scales were cross-validated on an independent sample from the population of child-abusing parents, significant shrinkage in the accuracy of prediction was found. The use of the special subscales for identifying "at risk" parents in prenatal clinics, pediatric clinics, pediatric clinics and mental health centers as originally suggested by Paulson and his colleagues is seriously questioned.