Abstract
The Fake Bad Scale (FBS; Symptom Validity Scale) has fundamental psychometric flaws, interpretive problems, and potentially adverse societal consequences that are not appreciated by Ben-Porath et al. (Psychological Injury and Law 2(1), 62–85, 2009a, b). The FBS was constructed without due consideration to scientifically based guidelines for scale development (Clark and Watson, Psychological Assessment 7, 309–319, 1995; Jackson, Psychological Review 78, 229–248, 1971; Nunnally 1978; Holden and Troister, Canadian Psychology 50, 120–130, 2009). After almost two decades in existence, its face, content, and construct validity have not been established in the empirical literature. Oft-cited discriminant studies that appear to support the FBS are premature because of the scale’s unestablished psychometric foundation. In addition, these studies have significant methodological weaknesses that preclude definitive conclusions about what the scale actually measures. We review these weaknesses and recent legal cases that challenge the scale. We recommend that the FBS’s validity and fairness be addressed in an independent scientific review by the Buros Mental Measurement Test Evaluation System, a non-profit center specializing in the evaluation of commercially available tests.
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Disclosure statement
Gass derives 10% to 15% of his total professional income from his private practice, less than 5% from plaintiff attorney consultation, and 0% from cases in which FBS played a role.
Butcher, Williams, and Cumella worked on the development of the MMPI-2 and/or MMPI-A; none receives royalties from sales of those instruments or their scales. None of the authors received consultant fees or other personal income for their contributions to this article.
Butcher is the author of an interpretive system for the MMPI-2, the Minnesota Report. The author royalties for the Minnesota Reports are 30% of the royalties the University of Minnesota receives from Pearson Assessments from its net sales and are well in excess of $10,000 annually. Butcher receives the full amount for the personnel and forensic systems, shares half with his co-author of the adolescent system (Williams), and voluntarily assigned 5% to Williams for her consultation on the Adult Clinical System. His part time practice includes forensic cases and he has testified fairly evenly for plaintiffs and defense. Since 1996, he has been retained on ten cases involving the Fake Bad Scale, one pro bono in 2009.
Williams splits the author royalties from the Minnesota Reports with Butcher as described above. She is a consultant to Butcher’s practice and receives income from that. Her work does not include expert witness testimony. Disclosure statements for Butcher and Williams appear at http://www1.umn.edu/mmpi/disclosure.php.
Cumella is on the faculty of Grand Canyon University, College of Health Sciences.
Kally is a researcher at the Center for Health Policy Research, School of Public Health at the University of California at Los Angeles. Neither receives any compensation related to the content of this article.
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Gass, C.S., Williams, C.L., Cumella, E. et al. Ambiguous Measures of Unknown Constructs: The MMPI-2 Fake Bad Scale (aka Symptom Validity Scale, FBS, FBS-r). Psychol. Inj. and Law 3, 81–85 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12207-009-9063-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12207-009-9063-2