Development and validation of culture-specific Variable Response Inconsistency and True Response Inconsistency scales for use with the Korean MMPI-2.

In response to the concern that Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2; J. N. Butcher, W. Dahlstrom, J. R. Graham, A. Tellegen, & B. Kaemmer, 1989; J. N. Butcher et al., 2001) Variable Response Inconsistency (VRIN) and True Response Inconsistency (TRIN) score invalidity criteria recommended for use with American samples results in an excessive number of exclusions in Asian samples (F. M. Cheung, W. Z. Song, & J. X. Zhang, 1996), we examined the cross cultural equivalence of the original VRIN and TRIN scales, and developed and validated Korean-specific VRIN and TRIN scales with Korean adult normative, clinical, and college samples. Although the results from item pair correlation analyses suggested the superiority of the Korean VRIN and TRIN over the original VRIN and TRIN, the mean comparison results and classification accuracy statistics using data with varying degrees of randomly inserted true and/or false responses did not reveal a strong advantage of one version over the other. We present and discuss plausible causes of the findings.