Future directions for the MMPI-A: research and clinical issues

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-Adolescent (MMPI-A; Butcher et al., 1992), released in 1992, was developed specifically for use with adolescent respondents. The purpose of this article is to offer suggestions concerning 6 areas of productive research with this instrument. These areas include studies of the utility of codetype interpretation, issues related to profile elevation in clinical samples, and the identification of criterion for evaluating the usefulness of traditional and new MMPI-A scales. Further, these research issues also include establishing the optimal age ranges for use with the MMPI-A, detecting the effects of the release of a revised instrument on clinician's test use patterns with adolescents, and evaluating the optimal methods for the use of the MMPI-A Structural Summary interpretative approach. It is noted that these research recommendations are by no means exhaustive, and that many other research areas should also be investigated in developing a comprehensive research literature for this revised instrument.