An abbreviation of the MMPI with increased comprehensibility and readability
Leigh C. Ward, Rosemary B. Selby · Journal of Clinical Psychology · 1980
A 167-item short form of the MMPI, the Improved Readability Form (IRF), was shown to contain items that were more readable, more stable, and less ambiguous than excluded items. MMPIs were obtained on 60 medical and psychiatric patients, presumably of normal intelligence, and raw scores for the IRF were calculated and correlated with the scales of the full MMPI. In addition, equations that allowed prediction of full-scale scores were calculated on the initial sample and applied to a second sample of 60 Ss with IQs between 80 and 110. For both samples, average IRF correlations with the full MMPI slightly exceeded corresponding correlations for the MMPI-168. Also, in cross-validation the IRF showed a greater correspondence with the MMPI in terms of clinical scale high points than did the MMPI-168. These results suggest that the IRF may function as well as available short forms with persons of normal and near normal intelligence and that, furthermore, it offers promise for use with Ss who are unable to understand the complete MMPI.