Abstract
Background: Traditionally, the assessment of random responding in psychological assessment tools has been the primary domain of large multi-scale inventories. However, the ability of clinicians to assess random responding when using short symptom inventories is also an important facet of reliably assessing psychopathology and psychological distress. Methods: This study assesses the effectiveness of a short symptom inventory, the Assessment of Depression Inventory (ADI), to assess random responding. Results: The responses of 335 clinical patients, 150 responses from a feigning population, and 1,000 generated random profiles were compared to determine if the Random and Reliability scales of the ADI could detect adequately random responses. Conclusions: Findings indicate that even scales as short as four items can be used to detect random responses in symptom inventories at levels equivalent to or better than longer multi-scale inventories.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 592-595 |
Number of pages | 4 |
Journal | Depression and anxiety |
Volume | 26 |
Issue number | 6 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jun 2009 |
Keywords
- Assessment
- Depression
- Random-responding
- Surveys
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Clinical Psychology
- Psychiatry and Mental health