The Lees-Haley Fake Bad Scale (FBS) or MMPI Symptom Validity Scale is a set of 43 items in the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), selected by Paul R. Lees-Haley in 1991 to detect

malingering Malingering is the fabrication, feigning, or exaggeration of physical or psychological symptoms designed to achieve a desired outcome, such as relief from duty or work. Malingering is not a medical diagnosis, but may be recorded as a "focus of c ...

for the

forensic Forensic science, also known as criminalistics, is the application of science to criminal and civil laws, mainly—on the criminal side—during criminal investigation, as governed by the legal standards of admissible evidence and criminal p ...

evaluation of

personal injury Personal injury is a legal term for an injury to the body, mind or emotions, as opposed to an injury to property. In common law jurisdictions the term is most commonly used to refer to a type of tort lawsuit in which the person bringing the suit (t ...

claimants.Lees-Haley, Paul R., Lue Thorn English, and Walter J. Glenn. "A fake bad scale on the MMPI-2 for personal injury claimants." Psychological Reports 68.1 (1991): 203-210. It was endorsed by the MMPI publishers in 2006 and incorporated into the official scoring keys. A 2008 ''

Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'' article noted that a few psychologists argued that it was controversial because they felt that some individuals with legitimate injuries would be categorized as faking bad.

History

The items on the FBS were selected by Lees-Haley on the basis of frequency differences between a sample of individuals known to be malingering and individuals judged to have legitimate complaints and his personal observations of malingerers. The FBS is a generally accepted validity test. For example, in their survey of validity test use, Sharland and Gfeller (2007) found that the FBS was the third most widely used validity test by neuropsychologists. In a more recent study, Martin, Schroeder, and Odland (2015) found in a survey of general practitioners that the FBS was the most widely used symptom validity test (SVT) for the

MMPI-2 The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) is a standardized psychometric test of adult personality and psychopathology. Psychologists and other mental health professionals use various versions of the MMPI to help develop treatment ...

and one of the two most widely used for the

MMPI-2-RF The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) is a standardized psychometric test of adult personality and psychopathology. Psychologists and other mental health professionals use various versions of the MMPI to help develop treatme ...

Validity

The largest

meta-analysis A meta-analysis is a statistical analysis that combines the results of multiple scientific studies. Meta-analyses can be performed when there are multiple scientific studies addressing the same question, with each individual study reporting me ...

of the FBS compared 1,615 judged over-reporters to 2,049 normal patients and found an

effect size In statistics, an effect size is a value measuring the strength of the relationship between two variables in a population, or a sample-based estimate of that quantity. It can refer to the value of a statistic calculated from a sample of data, the ...

of 0.94. The authors concluded that “the preponderance of the current literature supports the use of FBS ''within forensic settings''” (p. 55). An updated meta-analysis of data from 5,341 subjects published in 2010 further confirmed findings of the first. The authors conclude, “Practitioners who rely on FBS can be assured that the now extensive literature strongly supports application of FBS in forensic neuropsychology practice” (p. 717).Nelson, N. W., Hoelzle, J. B., Sweet, J. J., Arbisi, P. A. & Demakis, G. J. (2010). Updated meta-analysis of the MMPI-2 Symptom Validity Scale (FBS): Verified Utility in Forensic Practice. The Clinical Neuropsychologist, 24: 701-724.

References

{{reflist Psychological tests and scales Malingering Forensic psychology

History

Validity

See also

References