Faking Responses and Modifying Scales of Brazilian Portuguese Version of MCMI-III

Abstract

Self-report inventories have been widely used since last decades. Malingering by response bias are an important matter about such psychological tests. The MCMI-III is a personality assessment inventory that has been widely used in the world, including when malingering is highly suspected. So, this article aims to investigate Desirability and Debasement Scales of MCMI-III, thus contributing to the test adaptation for Brazil. Study sample (n = 2570) comes from the whole country, and has a large spectrum of age and education. After administration of the test, participants were categorized according to scores obtained in Low, Medium and High groups, to comparison by One-way ANOVA. Statistical differences has been found among groups, and highest clinical scores found was that from high Debasement and low Desirability groups, signing to construct validity of scales.