ABSTRACT
Use of psychological assessment instruments such as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2), Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI), and California Psychological Inventory (CPI) has become a frequent practice in police psychological evaluations in recent years. Such instruments are often used in conditional pre-employment psychological evaluations as well as for other purposes such as fitness-for-duty (FFDE) evaluations (Weiss, 2010; Weiss, Weiss, & Gacono, 2008). A major issue with such assessment instruments is that many of these tests were originally designed for purposes of clinical diagnosis and treatment planning and are not in fact instruments originally designed for use in employment settings. While certain newer instruments, such as the M-PULSE (Davis & Rostow, 2008), were designed especially for purposes of police psychological evaluations and were originally validated with law enforcement populations, most of these instruments were not, and validity studies had to be performed to make these instruments (particularly personality inventories such as the MMPI-2 and PAI) acceptable for use in law enforcement evaluations. As a result of the current emphasis by the American Psychological Association (APA) on promoting evidence-based practice, it is important for psychologists using such instruments in their practice of police psychology to have an understanding of the validity of these tests for applications in police work. The purpose of this chapter is (1) to better acquaint the practicing police psychologist with the validity issues applicable to the use of such assessment instruments, and then (2) to review the evidence supporting the validity of the most popular instruments.
