Abstract
Purpose/Aim of the Study: The Neurobehavioral Symptom Inventory (NSI) is a 22-item self-report measure created to quantify the somatosensory, cognitive, and affective symptoms of Post-concussive Syndrome. Developers of the NSI used a subset of 10 items, the Validty-10, to measure symptom overreporting. We compared the Validity-10 versus the remaining NSI items (i.e., the Remaining-12) for how accurately they detect symptom exaggeration on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory Second Edition - Restructured Form (MMPI-2-RF).
Materials and Methods: We used a sample of 45 veterans evaluated in a Polytrauma/TBI Clinic of a Midwest VA Healthcare System who completed the NSI and MMPI-2-RF.
Results: The Vaidity-10, Remaining-12, and Total Score all strongly correlated with mean of the MMPI-2-RF validity scales (r = .65, .67, and .70, respectively), illustrating equivalency among the various NSI scores. Groups were created based on significant T score elevation on any MMPI-2-RF validity scale (i.e. F-r > 119, or Fp-r, F-s, FBS, or RBS > 99). ROC analyses demonstrated that areas under the curve were equivalent for NSI Total Score (.84), Validity-10 (.81), and Remaining-12 (.81) in detecting overreporting.
Conclusions: These findings do not support the notion that the Validity-10 has unique utility as an embedded symptom validity scale and highlights the likelihood that NSI Total Score can also serve this function.
Disclosure statement
The authors do not have any conflicts of interest to disclose. This work was authored as part of the contributor’s official duties as an Employee of the United States Government and is therefore a work of the United States Government. In accordance with 17 U. S. C 105, no copyright protection is available for such works under U. S. Law.