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The MMPI-2 Restructured Clinical (RC) Scales (Tellegen et al., 2003) reflect a recent shift for this instrument toward the measurement of contemporary conceptualizations of psychopathology. The current investigation aimed to replicate and extend the theoretical and empirical linkage between the RC scales and dimensional models of personality and to investigate how well the RC scales conform to a higher-order structure of psychopathology. Participants were 271 psychiatric patients who had been administered the MMPI-2 and revised NEO Personality Inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1992) as part of a routine psychological evaluation. The results Indicated that the RC scales map onto the Five Factor Model of personality as hypothesized and in congruence with previous findings in personality and psychopathology. The RC scales conformed to a higher-order structure of internalizing, externalizing, and thought disturbance, replicating and extending previous work concerning hierarchical structures of psychopathology.
The Minnesota Multlphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2; Butcher, Graham, Ben-Porath, Tellegen, bahlstrom, & Raemmer, 2001) is the most frequently and widely used self-report measure of psychopathology (Camara, Nathan, & Puente, 2000). Th^e original clinical scales of this instrument, constructed by means of the empirical-criterion method (Hathaway & McKinley, 1940), were recently revised employing primarily a conceptually informed factor-analytic approach to scale (re)development (Tellegen et al., 2003). A major objective of the revision process was to remove systematically from each of the clinical scales the nonspecific distress variance shared by most psychiatric disorders. The result was the derivation of a set of eight "Restructured Clinical Scales" (RC; Tellegen et al., 2003), each measuring comparatively distinct forms of psychopathology-Somatic Complaints (RC1), Low Positive Emotions (RC2), Cynicism (RC3), Antisocial Behavior (RC4), Persecutory Ideation (RC6), Dysfunctional Negative Emotions (RC7), Aberrant Experiences (RC8), and Hypomanic Activation (RC9) in addition to a Demoralization (RCd) scale designed to represent the nonspecific distress component.1 Table 1 lists the RC scales, the number of items on each, reliabilities from normative data, and a brief description of what they assess.
In many respects, the MMPI-2 RC scales are distinctive in ways that correspond to contemporary conceptualizations of psychopathology. In contrast, one criticism of the original MMPI-2 Clinical Scales has been the tendency of the Clinical Scale profiles to show multiple simultaneous elevations even though the original purpose of these measures was to assess presumably distinctive...