Relevant MMPI Norms for Young Adult Air Force Trainees

Abstract

The Air Force Medical Evaluation Test (AFMET) research program utilized the MMPI in a psychological screening battery for basic trainees. T-scores based on the Adult Norms seemed excessively elevated. The norms for Minnesota Adolescents were tried for the 17-year-old airmen. MMPIs were given to entire squadrons not in the project, and the means and standard deviations were found to differ significantly from both earlier norms. These young adults differed in age, race, and education from the sample population of the Minnesota Adult Norms. T-conversion tables based on these new means and standard deviations were compiled.

The hard science of Rorschach research: What do we know and where do we go?

“…In our sample, the initial distribution of weighted and unweighted MMPI results differ noticeably because three studies used markedly larger samples to test their hypothesis. Bloom (1977) examined Masculinity–femininity (Mf) raw scores and biological sex in 1,957 Air Force recruits ( r = .78). Lebovits and Ostfeld (1970) examined the K scale and education level in 1,805 men ( r = .42).…”

A Study of Active Duty Military Personnel With the MMPI-2

“…One important early use of the MMPI involved the selection of military personnel for special duty assignments such as aviation training (Cerf, 1947;Fulkerson, Freud, & Raynor, 1958;Fulkerson & Sells, 1958;Garetz & Tierney, 1962;Geist & Boyd, 1980;Goorney, 1970;Jennings, 1948) or nuclear submarine training and naval diver training (Cook & Wherry, 1949;Weybrew, 1974Weybrew, , 1978Weybrew & Noddin, 1979). The MMPI has also been used extensively in evaluating training (Jensen & Rotter, 1947) and in predicting training failures (Altus, 1945;Altus & Bell, 1945;Bloom, 1977;Callan, 1972;Crook, 1944;Ekman, Friesen, & Lutzker, 1962;Lachar, 1974). Two additional areas of research in which the MMPI was widely used in the military service involved: (a) studies on the effects of harsh environmental conditions on human adjustment, such as with Naval personnel wintering in the Antarctic (Blackburn, Shurley, & Natani, 1973;Butcher & Ryan, 1974) and remote Alaskan stations (McCollum, 1951); and (b) the effects of imprisonment in a prisoner of war camp on later psychological adjustment (Sutker, Winstead, Goist, Malow, & Allain, 1986;Ursano, Wheatley, Sledge, Rahe, & Carlson, 1986;Wheatley & Ursano, 1982).…”

“…Because the subjects of many studies or clinical applications are young (often as young as 17 years), the average MMPI profiles obtained are typically found to be more elevated on several scales than profiles of the MMPI normative sample and more closely resemble the profiles of adolescent subjects reported by several authors (Hathaway & Monachesi, 1963;Marks, Seeman, & Haller, 1974). The obtained differences between military populations and the original MMPI normal population prompted several investigators to attempt to develop special norms for military personnel (Bloom, 1977; Parkison and Fishburne (1984) and Fishburne and Parkison (1984) conducted a study to develop special Army norms for male military personnel. They administered MMPIs and the Shipley Institute of Living Scale Vocabulary and Abstraction Tests to 1,930 male active-duty U.S. Army soldiers between the ages of 18 and 32 years.…”

Effectiveness of the K correction in the detection of psychopathology and its impact on profile height and configuration among young adult men.

“…Of particular relevance to the present study is the research by Bloom (1977). Bloom observed that the K-corrected MMPI tended to yield a large number of false positives as assessed from the clinical interview; Bloom then eliminated the K factor in the evaluation of Air Force trainees.…”

“…The referral group initially consisted of two subgroups. One of these groups of 200 subjects was initially identified as having emotional/behavioral problems through standard screening procedures within the first 3 to 5 days of training (see Bloom, 1977, for a description of this screening program). The second group of 200 subjects consisted of trainees who were initially identified by their supervisors or training instructors as having some type of problem that interfered with acceptable progress in the training program.…”