RESUMEN
The MMPI and more recently the MMPI-2 have been held to be the clinical standard for assessing both fake-good and fake-bad response styles. In a contrasted-groups design, we compared simulators under fake-good (n = 67) and fake-bad (n = 58) instructions to controls (n = 90) and psychiatric patients (n = 95) under standard instructions. For fake-good profiles, we found that F-K < -12 had a hit rate of 80.6% and was partly supported by earlier research (Austin, 1992). For fake-bad profiles, F > 89 and F-K > 7 were the optimum cutting scores with hit rates of 86.2% and 87.0%, respectively. Unfortunately, previous research fails to confirm these cutting scores and leading proponents of the MMPI-2 substantially disagree on what methods to employ. Therefore, we recommend in cases of suspected malingering that the MMPI-2 be used only for screening purposes.
RESUMEN
The Depressive Experiences Questionnaire (DEQ) was constructed to assess two distinct characterological configurations associated with depression--the anaclitic (dependent) and introjective (self-critical). Although the DEQ is widely used as a measure of these two personality constructs, its validity in actually measuring them is questionable. In this study we subjected a correlation matrix comprised of DEQ responses from a large sample of normal adults (N = 404) to confirmatory factor analysis to assess formally whether the DEQ is congruent with the theoretical parameters outlined by the model. Results indicated that neither the two-factor (Dependency, Self-Criticism) nor the three-factor (Dependency, Self-Criticism, Efficacy) models represented good approximations of the data. Using a series of exploratory factor analyses, we identified 19 items (9 dependency, 10 self-critical) from the original DEQ that were an excellent fit to the data for the two-factor model from "normal" adult, depressed outpatient, and student samples. Parameter estimates of the relationship between the two factors indicated only a modest association. Test-retest reliabilities for both the Dependency and Self-Criticism scales indicated excellent temporal stability. There were diagnostically meaningful variations in the mean scores between the "normal" sample and patient sample.