trait continuum. Hundreds of self-report inventories have appeared over the
past 60 years, some carefully constructed with attention to reliability and va-lidity, others not.
Self-report inventories are popular among professional psychologists for
several reasons. They can be given in groups or even online and can be ad-ministered quickly and easily by someone with relatively little training.
Contrast this with the Rorschach inkblot test, which must be administered
and interpreted by a trained psychologist one test at a time. Scoring a self-report inventory is also relatively easy and objective. Researchers typically
count matched items or total response values. Self-report measures also are
popular because they usually have greater face validity than other instru-ments. That is, we can be reasonably sure from looking at the items on a
self-esteem test that they actually measure self-esteem. Although face validity
alone does not establish the value of a test (Chapter 2), psychologists are lesslikely to disagree about what the test is measuring when the intent of the
items is so obvious.
Self-report inventories come in all forms and sizes. Some have fewer than
10 items, others more than 500. Some provide detailed computer analyses ona number of subscales and comparison groups, others a single score for a spe-
cific trait dimension. Self-report inventories are used by researchers investigat-
ing individual differences, personnel managers making hiring decisions, and
clinical psychologists getting a quick profile of their client ’s personality to aid
in making diagnoses.
The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
The prototypic self-report inventory used by clinical psychologists is the
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). The original MMPI
was developed in the late 1930s. A revised version of the scale, the MMPI-2,
was published in 1989. A large number of clinical psychologists, counseling
psychologists, personnel psychologists, and school psychologists give the
MMPI-2 regularly to their patients and clients.
The MMPI-2 contains 567 true-false items. These items generate several
scale scores that are combined to form an overall profile of the test taker.The original scales were designed to measure psychological disorders. Thus
psychologists obtain scores for such dimensions as depression, hysteria, para-
noia, and schizophrenia . However, most psychologists look at the overall pat-
tern of scores rather than one specific scale when making their assessments.Of particular interest are scores that are significantly higher or lower thanthose obtained by most test takers. A sample profile is shown in Figure 7.2.
Many additional scales have been developed since the original MMPI
scales were presented. Researchers interested in a particular disorder or con-
cept usually determine those items that separate a normal population from
the group they are interested in. For example, to develop a creativity scale,
you would identify test items that highly creative people tend to answer dif-
ferently from people who are not very creative.
For many years the MMPI (and now the MMPI-2) has ranked among the
most widely used clinical assessment tools (Camara, Nathan, & Puente, 2000;Assessment: Self-Report Inventories 173