Construction of validity scales for the Multiple Affect Adjective Check List-Revised

Area of Science:

• Psychological assessment
• Personality psychology
• Clinical psychology

Background:

• Response manipulation, or faking, is a significant concern in psychological testing.
• Existing measures like the MAACL-R Dysphoria and Positive Affect plus Sensation Seeking scales have limitations in detecting such manipulation.
• The need for reliable scales to identify dissimulated responding in various populations is critical.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate three new scales: the Fake Bad Scale, the Fake Good Scale, and the Fake Bad-Fake Good scales.
• To assess the capacity of these new scales to detect response manipulation on the Multiple Affect Adjective Check List-Revised (MAACL-R).
• To compare the efficacy of the new scales against established MAACL-R scales for detecting faking.

Main Methods:

• Development and cross-validation of the Fake Bad Scale, Fake Good Scale, and Fake Bad-Fake Good scales.
• Utilized two samples comprising college students (simulating fake good/bad, standard instructions) and psychiatric patients.
• Compared cutting scores of the new scales with those of the MAACL-R Dysphoria and Positive Affect plus Sensation Seeking scales.

Main Results:

• The developed scales demonstrated a capacity to detect response manipulation on the MAACL-R.
• Cross-validation confirmed the utility of cutting scores across different groups and conditions.
• The new scales proved more accurate in detecting response manipulation compared to the MAACL-R Dysphoria and Positive Affect plus Sensation Seeking scales.

Conclusions:

• The Fake Bad Scale, Fake Good Scale, and Fake Bad-Fake Good scales are effective tools for identifying response manipulation.
• These scales offer enhanced accuracy for detecting dissimulated responding in psychological assessments.
• The findings support the use of these new scales to improve the validity of data obtained from the MAACL-R.