ABSTRACT
This study was a comparison of the relative diagnostic efficiency of the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-II, the MMPI Personality Disorder Scales, and the Personality Disorder Questionnaire-Revised. The Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R, Axis II was used as the criterion measure. The operating characteristics of all three objective instruments revealed a high rate of false-positive diagnoses, but negative test results were generally valid. Each instrument was found to possess clinical utility in its ability to improve diagnostic efficiency over base rate predictions for most disorders. It is suggested that many of the psychometric limitations revealed in this study reflect the limitations of DSM-III-R, Axis II.
Subject(s)
Personality Disorders/diagnosis , Personality Inventory/statistics & numerical data , Adolescent , Adult , Diagnosis, Differential , Female , Humans , MMPI/statistics & numerical data , Male , Middle Aged , Personality Disorders/classification , Personality Disorders/psychology , Predictive Value of Tests , Psychometrics , Psychotherapy , Reproducibility of ResultsABSTRACT
This study investigated the concurrent descriptive validity of the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI) by comparison with a widely used objective personality inventory, the California Psychological Inventory (CPI), designed to assess normal personality functioning. Due to previous findings (Repko & Cooper, 1985), it was expected that the MCMI would overestimate the prevalence of personality disorders in a nonclinical population. Subjects were 237 male and female undergraduate students enrolled in a state university. A high degree of overlap was found between many of the scales of the MCMI and CPI, which indicates assessment of a number of similar personality dimensions. Depression as measured by the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) accounted for a significant amount of variance between the scales. Consistent with expectations, the MCMI was found to overestimate severely the frequency of personality disorders in a student population when compared to the CPI. These results are attributed to Millon's use of base rate scores that require prior knowledge of the population prevalence rate of disorders before accurate scores can be obtained for any population.