Critiquing symptom validity tests for posttraumatic stress disorder: A modification of Hartman's criteria

Investigating Differences in Truthful and Fabricated Symptoms of Traumatic Stress over Time

“…Overall accuracy of the TSI in discriminating between truthful and fabricated reports was 66.5% at time 1, 62.8% at time 2, and 63.1% at time 3. While significantly different than chance levels, sole reliance on the TSI to determine veracity would not be advised (see Efendov et al 2008;Elhai et al 2005;Nye et al 2006;Morel and Marshman 2008;Rosen et al 2006). We also predicted that fabricated symptom reports would be exaggerated and more consistent over time relative to truthful symptoms (whose severity tend to recede with the passage of time).…”

“…As recommended by the DSM-IV-TR (APA 2000), evaluators should carefully appraise the pattern of symptom reporting when a medicolegal context is present (e.g., compensation seeking). Researchers have evaluated the ability of various psychometric tools to accurately detect fabricated symptoms of traumatic stress and PTSD (Rogers 2008), but there remains no "gold standard" measure to date (Guriel and Fremouw 2003;Morel and Marshman 2008).…”

“…The client's scores on psychological testing yielded valid profiles and generally were not above cutoff levels on measures indicating inconsistent, infrequent, or unusual responding and impression management. Some scholars have argued that validity scales should be used with caution as they produce false positives and cannot reliably distinguish true invalid profiles (e.g., Elhai et al 2005;Morel and Marshman 2008;Rosen et al 2006). Further, some populations of PTSD claimants (i.e., combat veterans) often demonstrate overreporting behaviors and inflated profiles that are not necessarily indicative of malingering (e.g., Freeman et al 2008;Frueh et al 2000).…”

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Assessing Response Style and Malingering

“…A meta-analysis has been published (Morel and Shepherd 2008b), albeit as a letter to the editor, and the analysis included studies that used the variants of the MENT. Morel and Marshman (2008) argued that the MENT meets all of the criteria articulated by Hartman (2002) for appraising SVTs, including the Daubert criteria, although this conclusion may be premature.…”

Symptom Validity Testing in Claimants with Alleged Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Comparing the Morel Emotional Numbing Test, the Structured Inventory of Malingered Symptomatology, and the Word Memory Test

“…Specificity estimates (percentage of non-malingerers correctly classified as credible examinees) ranged from 77% to 100%, with a pooled estimate of 96%. Moreover, Morel and Marshman (2008) have reformulated Hartman's (2002) criteria for evaluating symptom validity tests.…”