Discriminating alcoholic and nonalcoholic patients with conventional and factored MMPI scales: a comparison

The factor scales were significantly more accurate than the conventional clinical scales in discriminating alcoholic from nonalcoholic patients. Whereas no single clinical scale emerged as highly important to the discrimination, Factor III emerged as very important to it. The possibility that Factor III represents an "alcoholic" factor was raised. From this study, it appears that the factor scales represent a more refined scoring version of the MMPI item pool.