Validity Rates of the Personality Assessment Inventory and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory–2 in a VA Medical Center Setting

In this study, we compared protocol validity rates between the MMPI–2 (Butcher, Dahlstrom, Graham, Tellegen, & Kaemmer, 1989 Butcher, J. N., Dahlstrom, W. G., Graham, J. R., Tellegen, A. and Kaemmer, B. 1989. MMPI-2): Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory: Manual of administration and scoring Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. [Google Scholar]) and the Personality Assessment Inventory (Morey, 1991 Morey, L. C. 1991. The Personality Assessment Inventory professional manual Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources. [Google Scholar]) in a veteran population. Veterans (N = 472) were administered both instruments as part of routine psychological evaluations. Profile validity was based on previously published criteria. When applying primary validity indicators, inpatients produced significantly fewer invalid PAI profiles (37%) than MMPI–2 profiles (63%). We found similar results among outpatients for which we considered 47% of MMPI–2 profiles invalid compared to only 21% of PAI profiles. When applying both primary and supplementary validity indicators, both inpatients and outpatients continued to produce fewer invalid PAI profiles than MMPI–2 profiles. We discuss factors that may be related to the differences in validity rates.