The MMPI-2 Clinical Scales and Restructured Clinical (RC) Scales: comparative psychometric properties and relative diagnostic efficiency in young adults.

We examined the psychometric properties of the Restructured Clinical (RC) scales (Tellegen et al., 2003) of the MMPI-2 (Butcher, Dahlstrom, Graham, Tellegen, & Kaemmer, 1989) in a large sample (N = 744) of 18-year-old college freshman. We found that the RC scales demonstrated good convergence with their Clinical scale counterparts and were more distinctive than the Clinical scales. The patterns of discriminant correlations for the RC scales were slightly clearer than those of the Clinical scales and a set of other existing MMPI-2 scales. Diagnostic efficiency statistics based on Clinical and RC scale elevation status did not differ appreciably. However, the diagnostic efficiency statistics of cutoff scores derived from mean RC and Clinical scale T scores improved on the traditional scale elevation measures. We consider the clinical implications of these findings.