Previously Unscored Pre-Service MMPI Data in Relation to Police Performance Over a Decade

Abstract

We re-scored MMPI answer sheets completed a decade earlier by applicants for appointment to a medium-sized municipal police department and related the newly-calculated scores on the original clinical scales and on 22 derivative scales to a positive and to a negative index of performance, respectively, over the span of a decade of service. While the answer sheets had been scored for the original clinical scales that inventory psychopathology by the consulting psychologist who had examined applicants, they had not been scored for any of the 132 secondary (derivative) scales that, in general, aim to measure aspects of personality and behavior rather than diagnosable psychopathological conditions. Since applicants had been screened for freedom from inventoriable psychopathol-ogy on the basis of the original clinical scales, we did not expect to find significant relationships between the newly re-scored values on these scales and either index of performance; nor were such found. No significant bivariate relationships were found through rectilinear correlation between the positive performance index (cumulative number of formal, written commendations) and scores on any of the newly scored derivative scales. Significant bivariate relationships were found between the negative performance index (cumulative number of formal reprimands) and scores on two of the newly scored derivative scales (viz., the Wiggins poor morale scale and the Tryon-Stein-Chu social introversion scale). Against the negative index, stepwise multiple regression progressed to three significant steps (extracting as interactive predictors the Wiggins poor morale scale, the Tryon-Stein-Chu tension and social introversion scales, in that order), yielding a multiple coefficient of %0.730, significant beyond p = .05. Results enable the department in question to employ the MMPI in future to predict an important index of negative (but not positive) performance in a manner that moves toward meeting the predictive validity requirements of the historic Griggs v. Duke Power Co. decision of the U.S. Supreme Court and the congruent guidelines issued by the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

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