Date of Award

January 2013

Degree Type

Open Access Thesis

Document Type

Master Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Dustin B. Wygant

Department Affiliation

Psychology

Abstract

Although it is widely known that the link between ethnicity and psychopathology is undeniable, there still remains ambiguity concerning the possibility of racial bias on measures assessing psychopathology. The current study examined the extent to which the MMPI-2-RF is affected by racial bias. Using a sample of 1017 college students, the current study examined whether ethnicity acted as a moderating variable in the MMPI-2-RF's ability to predict conceptually relevant criteria for African Americans as it does for Caucasians. Step-down hierarchical linear regression test were implemented to determine the presence of prediction bias and whether there were indications of slope and intercept bias. Overall, the results suggest minimal presence of predication bias on the MMPI-2-RF and when it was present, the effect sizes were minimal and not clinically significant. This study provides preliminary evidence that the MMPI-2-RF can effectively capture personality and psychopathology traits in African Americans as well as Caucasians.

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