An MMPI-2 Scale to Identify History of Sexual Abuse

Abstract

This study attempted to extract an MMPI-2 scale identifying adult male and female victims of severely traumatogenic childhood sexual abuse. Such a scale might aid in the early detection and diagnosis of trauma sustained from abuse and lead to prevention of childhood sexual abuse in subsequent generations since victims are more likely to expose their offspring to similar abuse. Victims of severe childhood sexual abuse almost inevitably suffer from trauma. Taking the severity of abuse into consideration, a higher identification rate than the one obtained in previous attempts was expected. The sample ( N = 201), recruited from a low-fee outpatient clinic and a community mental health center, was divided into a severe childhood sexual abuse-reporting group and a control group, based on Russell's (1983) definitions. To crossvalidate, the data were analyzed three ways. A stepwise discriminant function analysis based on Wilks Lambda yielded 95% correct classification (using 52 MMPI-2 items), a discriminant function analysis based on chi-squared yielded 77% classification (using 63 items), and a stepwise logit analysis yielded 71% classification (using 15 items). There was little agreement among the items identified by the three solutions.