International Adaptations of the MMPI-2

Research and Clinical Applications

1996

James N. Butcher, editor

The first cross-cultural guide to the world's most widely used personality test.

“This book is well organized, clearly written, relevant, and detailed. . . . regular and serious users of the MMPI-2 will find it indispensable.” Choice

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Psychology

The most widely used objective clinical test of personality is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2), a revised version of the original test that was published in 1989. One of the proven strengths of the test is its adaptability to a large variety of cultures and languages. Representing a truly international collaboration, International Adaptations of the MMPI-2 discusses cross-national personality assessment research generally and provides extensive documentation on the adaptation of the MMPI-2 into other languages.

The fifty-six contributors to this volume provide detailed accounts of translation and research conducted around the world, demonstrating the growing clinical research basis of the test. Beginning with some general methodological chapters, the book presents a number of issues and practical problems related to the translation of personality inventories. Information from several translation projects is used to provide detailed illustrations of how translation difficulties were dealt with in different cultural contexts employing different translation techniques. A separate chapter addresses some model approaches to testing the equivalence of psychological tests in cross-cultural settings.

In the next section of the book, the contributors describe the process by which the test has been translated into Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Hmong, Flemish/Dutch, Norwegian, Icelandic, Russian, Greek, Turkish, Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian. Several chapters address “international” applications within the United States-for example, the use of the MMPI-2 with Asian Americans and the importance of considering an individual's level of acculturation when using the test.

An essential guide for those administering and doing reasearch on translations of the MMPI-2,
International Adaptations of the MMPI-2 provides vital information on the process of translating this important personality assessment tool.

James N. Butcher is professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Minnesota. He is the editor of Psychological Assessment and is an MMPI consultant to the University of Minnesota Press.

“This book is well organized, clearly written, relevant, and detailed. . . . regular and serious users of the MMPI-2 will find it indispensable.” Choice

“One cannot overestimate the importance of this large restandardization project and the questions which need now to be studied. The care and thoroughness with which so many have participated in this project invite clinicians’ eagerness in examining the rationale for the new MMPI-2 Content Scales, the methods used in their development and their psychometric properties and case illustrations.” Psychological Reports

"...It affords interested readers a view of the development of a set of psychometric scales, the intamacy of which is virtually unprecedented in the psychological test-development literature..."

...The publisher, the University of Minnesota Press, is to be congratulated for publishing an excellent, important monograph that -although it should be read by everyone interested in personality assessment- they probably realized would be of primary interest of a small group of specialists.

American Scientist,