Abstract
In psychological injury and related forensic evaluations, two types of tests are commonly used to assess Negative Response Bias (NRB): Symptom Validity Tests (SVTs) and Performance Validity Tests (PVTs). SVTs assess the credibility of self-reported symptoms, whereas PVTs assess the credibility of observed performance on cognitive tasks. Compared to the large and ever-growing number of published PVTs, there are still relatively few validated self-report SVTs available to professionals for assessing symptom validity. In addition, while several studies have examined how to combine and integrate the results of multiple independent PVTs, there are few studies to date that have addressed the combination and integration of information obtained from multiple self-report SVTs. The Special Issue of Psychological Injury and Law introduced in this article aims to help fill these gaps in the literature by providing readers with detailed information about the convergent and incremental validity, strengths and weaknesses, and applicability of a number of selected measures of NRB under different conditions and in different assessment contexts. Each of the articles in this Special Issue focuses on a particular self-report SVT or set of SVTs and summarizes their conditions of use, strengths, weaknesses, and possible cut scores and relative hit rates. Here, we review the psychometric properties of the 19 selected SVTs and discuss their advantages and disadvantages. In addition, we make tentative proposals for the field to consider regarding the number of SVTs to be used in an assessment, the number of SVT failures required to invalidate test results, and the issue of redundancy when selecting multiple SVTs for an assessment.
Highlights
The expression “negative response bias” (NRB) refers to a tendency to generate less implied healthy or more pathological test results than would be expected based on the overall level of adjustment of the test-taker (Dyonisus et al, 2011; Franzen & Iverson, 2000; Rogers & Bender, 2018)
To determine which self-report SVTs should be included in this Special Issue, two chief criteria were considered, i.e., the frequency with which professionals use a given tool in their practice, and the number of research articles reporting on available SVTs during the past few years
The results presented by Shura et al (2021) suggest that (a) the Structured Inventory of Malingered Symptoms (SIMS) has been used and researched extensively worldwide over the past 20 years and (b) the SIMS has excellent sensitivity to overreporting, so it can be very useful in ruling out the need for additional symptom validity assessment
Summary
Tests” (SVTs), whereas those evaluating the credibility of observed performance on cognitive tasks are labeled “Performance Validity Tests” (PVTs). Hawes and Boccaccini’s (2009) meta-analysis suggested that NIM cut scores recommended by Morey (2003) and Sellbom and Bagby (2008) would yield an excessively high number of false positives, which would be appropriate only when the PAI is being used for screening purposes (see Boccaccini & Hart, 2018) This uncertainty as to which cut scores one should consider when making a determination on the credibility of the overall forensic presentation of the case at hand poses a serious challenge to the use of existing SVTs. On the other hand, as Rogers et al (2012) clearly pointed out when elaborating on the “laser accuracy myth of cut scores” A full description of the Call for Papers prepared before contacting authors potentially interested in contributing to this Special Issue is reported
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