Abstract
A major goal in the development of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 Restructured Form (MMPI-2-RF), and subsequently, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-3 (MMPI-3) was linking the instrument to contemporary models of psychopathology. The present study evaluated whether the higher order structure of MMPI-3 scales, and in particular, the 26 Specific Problems as well as RC6 and RC8 (markers of thought disorder) scales aligned with the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) model. For this purpose, a large diverse mental health sample (n = 1,537) and a male prison inmate sample (n = 452) were used to capture a diverse range of psychopathology. Confirmatory factor analyses generally supported the six HiTOP spectra in both samples, albeit with some important qualifications. Associations between latent factor scores and conceptually relevant external criterion measures further supported the validity of this model. Furthermore, Goldberg's sequential hierarchical factoring approach was used to evaluate the structure of MMPI-3 SP and RC6/RC8 at descending levels of the hierarchy. Again, most of the HiTOP spectra were replicated. The structures for the mental health and prison samples were generally similar with substantive differences being linked to their respective contexts. Overall, the results indicate that the hierarchical organization of the MMPI-3 scales is generally consistent with the extant psychopathology literature, which constitutes good support for overall construct validity of the scales.
Public Significance Statement This research links the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-3 (MMPI-3), the most recent version of a frequently used test in clinical psychology practice, to a contemporary scientific model of mental health disorders. More specifically, the MMPI-3 scales can be approximately aligned with the recently introduced Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP).