Demographic Data and MMPI-2 Scores of Veterans in a Personnel Screening
[Thesis]
Canarelli, Anthony M.
Staples, Jennifer
Alliant International University
2019
132
Psy.D.
Alliant International University
2019
The study was designed to provide a current examination of associations between age, education, and marital status with MMPI-2 scores of recent veterans in a job-seeking context; to provide data complementary to those collected by the VA in clinical and compensation-seeking contexts. The effects of favorable impression management in employment screenings are well-established; normative T-scores on Clinical, Content, and Supplemental Scales with slightly elevated Validity Scales reflect adaptive efforts to appear favorable to a potential employer. A sample of 97 MMPI-2 profiles of job-seeking participants who reported a history of at least one wartime deployment to Iraq and/or Afghanistan were categorized by self-reported age, education level, and marital status. Based on prior literature, age was predicted to associate with lower T-scores, education was predicted to associate with higher scores on scales designed to measure adaptive traits; and scores of divorced participants to be higher than single participants' scores, while scores of married participants would be lowest among the three categories. The following hypotheses were tested with t-tests: the mean T-scores of participants aged 21-27 (n = 49) would be statistically higher than a group aged 28-52 (n = 48) on scales Pd and ANG; and the mean of participants with college experience (n = 57) would be higher than the mean of participants without college (n = 36) on sales Es and DO. An Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was used to test for significant differences in T-scores among divorced (n = 17), single (n = 25), or married (n = 53) groups on Scales D, ANX, and FAM. Results overall were not significant, while overall mean T-scores were found to be consistent with adaptive impression management. This suggests that service in Iraq or Afghanistan did not hinder participants' efforts to appear favorable to potential employers. This may have implications for advocacy of war veterans and their employability.