An investigation into the usefulness of the MMPI and MMPI-2 in municipal and state police candidate selection

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and the later revision (MMPI-2) have been two of the most frequently employed instruments in the selection of law enforcement officers (Bartol, 1996). In this study, the following three sets of data were collected and analyzed: municipal law enforcement officer candidates tested with the MMPI, municipal law enforcement officer candidates tested with the MMPI-2, and state police trooper candidates tested with the MMPI-2. These three data sets were evaluated for their effectiveness at predicting “pass/fail” status on police candidate interview using multiple linear regression. A combination of subscales were found to be associated with classification as either pass or fail on interview.