Cross-cultural Validity in Feigning Assessment Measures among Chinese Immigrants
Abstract
The use of forensic assessment measures with immigrant populations is a source of concern, particularly given the importance of accuracy when evaluations occur in the context of the forensic system. This concern is especially noteworthy when it comes to detecting symptom exaggeration, in that no measures have been developed and validated with Chinese immigrants, who represent a substantial minority in the criminal justice system in the United States. The current study investigated the utility of four widely used feigning detecting measures that had been translated into Chinese: the Structured Interview of Reported Symptoms, Second Edition (SIRS-2), the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2-Restructured Form (MMPI-2-RF), the Test of Memory Malingering (TOMM), and the Dot Counting Test (DCT). These instruments were used in a simulation design, contrasting participants instructed to respond honestly to those instructed to feign psychopathology with a community sample of Chinese immigrants. The results demonstrated well performances of the Chinese SIRS-2, MMPI-2-RF, and TOMM in differentiating honest responders from feigners, but not the DCT. However, the high rates of classification accuracy found in the current study might have not been maintained if administrators did not speak Mandarin fluently and had the same cultural background with this sample. Moreover, honest responders who had lived in the U.S, for a short period of time had a higher possibility of being misclassified as feigners in the Chinese SIRS-2. Yet, SIRS-2 classification was not associated with SMAS, an acculturation scale. In the comparison of rates of specificity and sensitivity, the F-r validity of the Chinese MMPI-2-RF performed equally well with the SIRS-2 classification and Total Score. Similarly, there was no significant difference between the TOMM and DCT in terms of their classification accuracy. Using optimized cutoff scores did not significantly generate higher rates of specificity and sensitivity in the majority of measures or scale scores except for the SIRS-2 Total Score and the FBS-r scale of the MMPI-2-RF. The general high classification accuracy of these measures might contribute to the results of not finding significant differences. Finally, the current study suggested the need and directions of future studies.
Subject Area
Clinical psychology|Asian American Studies|Criminology|Asian Studies
Recommended Citation
Chang, Yi-Ting, "Cross-cultural Validity in Feigning Assessment Measures among Chinese Immigrants" (2019). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI22616774.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI22616774
