Development and validation of a Psychological Screening Inventory

journal abstract: This paper describes the rationale, development, and validation of the Psychological Screening Inventory (PSI), a 10-20-minute instrument designed to maximize the advantages of the inventory technique. It is intended as a brief screening device for use in mental health related settings where time and psychological skills may be at a premium. The five scales are: (a) Alienation, assessing similarity to psychiatric patients; (b) Social Nonconformity, assessing similarity to incarcerated prisoners; (c) Discomfort, assessing the major personality factor of anxiety or perceived maladjustment; (d) Expression, assessing the factor of extraversion or undercontrol; and (e) Defensiveness, assessing test-taking attitude. Norms were established on a national sample of 500 men and 500 women. Validity data include mean profiles of cross-validation groups, hit-and-miss discriminations, intercorrelations with other inventories, factor analyses of correlations with the MMPI for college students, mean MMPI profiles of extreme scorers on certain PSI scales, and relationships with intelligence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).