The Utility of Personality Inventories in the Employee Assistance Process

Abstract

A study was conducted to assess the usefulness of objective measures of personality in (a) the identification of employees in need of an employee assistance program (EAP) and (b) the evaluation of employee mental health change as a result of EAP participation. In addition, comparisons of EAP referred and non-referred employees were made on race, sex, age, and performance variables. MMPI, CPI, and SRA-Verbal Form test data from all or part of a sample of 376 police officers referred for fitness-for-duty evaluations were used in various analyses. Many of the officers were reassessed following an EAP intervention, while others chose not to accept the intervention (forming a natural control group). It was found that the MMPI-2 has the potential utility in both the identification and evaluation stages of the EAP process. Males and black employees were found to more likely to be referees to an EAP. Finally, it was found that referred employee performance was more than a half a standard deviation lower than that of non-referred employees.