The K factor as a suppressor variable in the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory

Abstract

The susceptibility of structured personality inventories to outright deception or unconscious self-deception, etc., have made their validity highly questionable. Yet the present trend appears to be toward "precise" statistical manipulations of such personality scores stressing statistical interrelationships of item responses much more than the relation of the latter to external nontest criteria. In an attempt toward finding answers for both of these faults the "final result of many efforts to derive special scales for measuring various attitudes in the taking of the Minnesota Multiphasic Inventory is presented, with some indications of its validity. The relationship of this scale, called K, to other variables is used as a basis for discussing certain general problems in the theory of personality measurements." (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)