YOSSEF S. BEN-PORATH: The MMPI-2-RF is used in public safety settings, primarily in pre-employment evaluations, although it can also be used in fitness for duty assessments. In pre-employment evaluations, one of the challenges when using the MMPI-2-RF is that we're not dealing with the clinical population. Instead, we're dealing with a highly pre-selected population, because in order to even be referred for a pre-employment evaluation for, say, law enforcement or other public safety positions, you need already to have been offered the job. You need to have been given a conditional offer of employment. That's part of the requirement of the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
So, we wind up seeing a psychologically healthy population, by and large, when doing these pre-employment evaluations. We shouldn't expect to, nor will we find, many clinically significant elevations on the MMPI-2-RF. Fortunately, we have a very solid and comprehensive body of research that helps guide use of the tests in these settings.
And this research has indicated that non-elevated, not clinically elevated, but still significantly above the norm for, say, police candidate scores on the MMPI-2-RF are associated with negative outcomes in police candidates. And we can rely on this literature to help use the test as part of the pre-employment evaluation for identifying risk factors associated with hiring a given candidate.