Equivalence evaluation of the MMPI-2 for Singaporean college students
In evaluating cross-cultural assessments, it is imperative to establish factor invariance across national samples before performing inter-and intea-scale comparisons as factor validity ensures items and/or scales have generally the same psychological meaning in the new culture. This study examined the cross-cultural equivalence of the MMPI-2 for an Asian yet highly Westernized young adult population of Singapore. As it is an English-speaking population, direct comparison of the MMPI-2 performance between the U.S. and Singaporean samples were made without the confounds of translation. MMPI-2 responses from 199 females and 183 males were factor analyzed at the basic and content scale levels, and the factors were compared with those of the American, Korean and Japanese college samples. Comparisons of scale means and standard deviations were also performed. Factor analyses of the 15 content scales resulted in a two-factor solution which indicated identical factor structures across samples, genders and nationalities. Factor analyses of the basic scales indicated that the four-factor solution for Singaporean females yielded better convergence with American and Japanese females, whereas for Singaporean males, the three-factor solution yielded greater convergence with Korean and American males. Comparisons of scale means and standard deviations revealed significant differences between Singaporean sample and samples of other nationalities on most of the clinical and content scales when the t-test was used, a test that is affected by large sample sizes. In addition to the t-test, effect sizes using Cohen's d (which is not affected by sample sizes) were calculated to determine significant differences between samples. The factor structures of the MMPI-2 content scales for the Singaporean sample is internally consistent with other national samples and is therefore measuring similar latent variables as the original MMPI-2. Factor structures for the basic scales for the Singaporean male sample, however, are less internally consistent with the original. Future research involving examination of the basic scales, which did not show factor invariance across national samples, is in order. The results of this study indicate the importance of establishing test validity in a cross-cultural setting. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved)
https://www.upress.umn.edu/test-division/bibliography/2000-2009/2005/sankaran_equivalence_2005
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Kyrie Sankaran
(2005)
Equivalence evaluation of the MMPI-2 for Singaporean college students
PhD thesis.