Abstract

According to the Americans with Disabilities Act, universities and colleges are required to provide accommodative services for students with disabilities. Many studies have examined the role of malingering mental health symptoms in order to obtain psychotropic medications, but very little research has been done on the role of accommodations as secondary gain in students who may malinger learning disabilities. This study sought to examine both the usefulness of implementing specific malingering detection measures in psychological evaluations with university students and the agreement of those measures within the population. Archival data was gathered from a university accommodation clinic that provided free psychological evaluations for consecutively presenting students (N=121). Four malingering detection measures were used: the Test of Memory and Malingering (TOMM), the Word Memory Test (WMT), the WAIS Digit Span (DS) and two cut scores for the MMPI-2 F Scale (F Scale 80 and F Scale 95). Scores for these four malingering detection measures were compared in terms of their agreement rates, their classification rates (at a 10% malingering base rate recommendation), and their sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive powers using both the TOMM and WMT independently as diagnostic criterion. A qualitative examination of the data revealed that different combinations of measures did classify some of the same respondents as malingering. Results indicated that each of these four measures share the ability to detect malingering in its different forms and have similar classification rates. Although the TOMM and WMT likely provide overlapping information, the pragmatic implementation of one of these measures may assist in the evaluation of suspected malingering with accommodation-seeking students.

Degree

PhD

College and Department

Family, Home, and Social Sciences; Psychology

Rights

http://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/

Date Submitted

2012-07-03

Document Type

Dissertation

Handle

http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/etd5412

Keywords

malingering, accommodation, student population, TOMM, WMT, F Scale, Digit Span

Language

English

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Psychology Commons

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