The MMPI: A Contemporary Normative Study of Adolescents

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) is the most widely used and thoroughly researched of all the objective personality assessment instruments. However, current norms for adolescents are based on cases drawn from studies conducted 25-45 years ago. This book presents the procedures used to develop contemporary adolescent norms and is intended to serve as a manual for their use. The study used 1315 randomly selected, non-paid adolescent males and females ranging in age from 13 through 17 years, who were screened for physically or mentally handicapping conditions that might have biased response patterns. Contemporary norms using the traditional approach of scores without K correction, as well as entirely new norms based on raw scores with K correction, were developed. All of the normative tables use easily normalized T scores instead of the linear transformations that have been used in the past. In the adolescent study, changes were studied that might have occurred in the way contemporary normal adolescents in junior and senior high school responded to the items of the MMPI. Because of the many significant changes that were observed when MMPI responses from our contemporary normal adult sample were compared with the original adult MMPI norms, it's believed that it was necessary to investigate the possibility that similar changes had occurred among adolescents ages 13-17 years during the 25 years since Marks and Briggs established their normal adolescent samples.