A correction procedure for the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 for persons with spinal cord injury.

Abstract

To develop a procedure that adjusts scoring of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) for the items related to spinal cord injury (SCI) that skew interpretations with this population, and to assess the accuracy of interpretations resulting from this procedure, standard MMPI-2 scoring, and a previously offered procedure. A criterion study with masked comparisons. Hospital inpatient physical medicine and rehabilitation unit. Thirty-four SCI patients between the ages of 18 and 77 years, 19 with complete SCI and 15 with incomplete SCI. Twenty-one nurses, 23 physicians, and 17 psychologists. Masked MMPI-2 profiles, judged by clinicians for accuracy. Paired t tests comparing profile scales. A correction procedure was arrived at for the MMPI-2 and MMPI-A incorporating adjustments for physical complaints frequently arising from SCI. The new procedure was judged superior to both the standard procedure and the previously offered procedure. Paired t tests of MMPI-2 scales showed that differences from scoring procedures were significant with many scales measuring significance at the p < .0001 level. Statistically significant changes in MMPI-2 profiles occur when somatic complaints related to SCI are corrected for. Preliminary results suggest that the application of the new correction procedure increases clinical accuracy.