The Wiggins Content Scales (WCS) continue to be popular among clinicians. However, MMPI profile patterns across the basic scales have shown significant changes since the inception of the MMPI in 1937. Therefore, the possibility of similar changes on the WCS was investigated. Significant differences between the old norms and a large, randomly selected contemporary normal sample ( N = 1,408) were found on 9 of the WCS for women and on 5 for men. New normative tables are presented as an aid for clinicians who use the WCS.
Starke R. Hathaway, a medical psychologist, and John C. McKinley, a neuropsychiatrist, began work on the Medical and Psychiatric Inventory (MPI) in 1937. This new questionnaire, later to be known as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), was intended to be an aid to the physicians of that era, who had estimated that from 30% to 70% of their patients had psychological factors that were of significance in the presenting medical complaint (Hathaway & McKinley, 1940;McKinley & Hathaway, 1943).
As we have all been taught, items that compose the basic clinical scales of the MMPI were selected primarily by empirical means. Response patterns obtained from criterion groups with known psychological and behavioral characteristics were compared with contrast groups of normal people, medical patients, and persons with various psychiatric diagnoses. Thus, the various scales of the MMPI contain diverse item content, and, in addition, some items are included on more than one scale because of the empirical selection procedures that were used.
However, another view of scale construction also can be taken. Wiggins (1966Wiggins ( , 1969) ) contended that a patient who is completing the MMPI is likely to view the experience as an opportunity to communicate symptoms, feelings, and attitudes directly to the examiner. Thus, the individual can choose to endorse various types of item content and may do so in a characteristic pattern. Although there may be conscious or unconscious bias in the respondent's communication through the MMPI items, Wiggins stressed that such relatively direct messages from the patient should not be overlooked because they might provide useful information to supplement interpretations made from the basic clinical scales. With these views in mind, Wiggins began his work by considering each of the 26 original content categories, which had been described by Hathaway and McKinley after the item pool was developed, as a scale (Wiggins & Vollmar, 1959). From the MMPIs of 500 college students, the Hathaway content-category scales were scored to yield a single value for each scale for each of the students. Internal consistency was evaluated by correlations between the totals for odd and even items. Subsequently, factor-analytic procedures were performed on the intercorrelation matrix composed of the 26 Hathaway content-category scores separately by sex. This yielded six interpretable factors for both men and women.
The authors express appreciation to Ms. Linda J. Rings and Ms. Christine G. Jensen for their assistance in processing these data and to Ms. Jacquelyn D. Keller for her contribution in preparing the tabular and narrative material.