Detecting faking good in military enlistment procedure according to a new index for the MMPI-2

Abstract

n forensic contexts, reverse malingering and faking good are no rare observations. Continuing a previous study in which
the authors had drawn up an index to detect faking good in forensic contexts (FEDI), based on the MMPI-2 scales, the present
work proposes an index to be used in military enlistment procedures, which has been denominated as the Military Enlistment
Dissimulation Index (MEDI). The work describes two consecutive studies: in the first study a group of candidates
for military enlistment was selected in order to discriminate the MMPI-2 variables at the highest risk of faking and thereby
build the MEDI index. In the second study the MEDI index was validated on two different cohorts of candidates for enlistment,
applying the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) Curve for comparisons with a control group. The performance
of MEDI in discriminating enlistment candidates from the volunteer respondents resulted satisfactory in terms of
diagnostic accuracy (Cohort 1: Area Under Curve = .79, Standard Error = .03, Sensibility = .85, Specificity = .78; Cohort
2: Area Under Curve = .79, Standard Error = .03, Sensibility = .82, Specificity = .70).