Development and Validation of the Validity Indicator Profile

The Validity Indicator Profile (VIP; Frederick, 1997) is a two-alternative forced choice (2AFC) procedure intended to identify when the results of cognitive and neuropsychological testing may be invalid because of malingering or other problematic response styles. The test consists of 100 problems that assess nonverbal abstraction capacity and 78 word-definition problems. The VIP attempts to establish whether an individual's performance in an assessment battery should be considered representative of his or her true overall capacities (valid or invalid). Performances classified as valid are classified as compliant and reflect a high effort to respond correctly. Performances classified as invalid are subclassified as careless (low effort to respond correctly), irrelevant (low effort to respond incorrectly), or malingering (high effort to respond incorrectly). The VIP development sample included 944 nonclinical participants and 104 adults undergoing neuropsychological evaluation. The cross-validation sample consisted of 152 nonclinical participants, 61 brain-injured adults, 49 individuals considered to be at risk for malingering, and 100 randomly generated VIP protocols. The nonverbal subtest of the VIP demonstrated an overall classification rate of 79.8%, with 73.5% sensitivity and 85.7% specificity. The verbal subtest of the VIP demonstrated an overall classification rate of 75.5%, with 67.3% sensitivity and 83.1% specificity.Ross Crosby was at NCS Assessments, Minnetonka, Minnesota, during much of this project     

The midterm referendum: The importance of attributions of responsibility

Analysts and commentators have long regarded midterm congressional elections as an interim evaluation of the president. Recent research has emphasized the effect of the individual qualities of congressional candidates on the vote. Both factors contributed to the 1982 congressional vote. However, the relative success of the Republican party in 1982 was made possible by the unwillingness of a majority of the electorate to attribute the country's economic problems to the administration. This attribution factor, implicitly ignored in most analyses of the effect of the economy on vote choices, is examined here.     

The Voting Rights Act and Louisiana: Twenty Years of Enforcement

This article examines the interaction of structural change (lawsaffecting voting rights) and cultural continuities (differencesbetween the Protestant and black Catholic political cultures)on the level and quality of black political participation inLouisiana. Blacks who at mid-century resided in the French-Catholicparishes were more likely to register and vote than blacks wholived outside these parishes. The advent of the Voting RightsAct has radically changed this pattern. Northern parishes havingthe highest proportion of black population, the highest landtenancy rates, and a tradition of a plantation economy are nowamong the parishes exhibiting the highest rates of black voterregistration.     

Antecedents and Consequences of Psychiatric Disorders in African-American Adolescents

This study included three waves of data, collected from approximately 890 African-American children and their families. Antecedents and consequences of psychiatric disorders among this population were examined. Children’s temperament, pubertal timing, and experience of stressful life events were tested as antecedents of psychiatric disorders. Several aspects of school functioning were then tested as consequences of psychiatric disorders. In addition, children with a single psychiatric disorder and those with comorbid disorders were statistically compared. Results showed that (1) children with at least one disorder, compared to those with no disorder, exhibited significantly more difficult temperament, experienced puberty earlier, and underwent greater numbers of stressful life events; (2) those with at least one disorder had significantly poorer school outcomes than those with no disorder; (3) children with comorbid disorders, compared with those who had only one disorder, displayed lower educational aspirations and poorer school commitment.

Postdicting arrests for proactive and reactive aggression with the PICTS Proactive and Reactive composite scales

The criminal arrest histories of 262 medium-security male inmates were correlated with the Proactive (P) and Reactive (R) composite scales of the Psychological Inventory of Criminal Thinking Styles (PICTS). As predicted, only scores on the P scale correlated significantly with prior arrests for proactive aggression (robbery, burglary) and only scores on the R scale correlated significantly with prior arrests for reactive aggression (assault, domestic violence) when age, education, race, and marital status were controlled in a series of negative binomial regression analyses. The P and R scales also predicted the total number of arrests received by participants in this sample after these same four demographic measures were controlled. The implications of these results for the construct validity of the PICTS composite scales and for matching offenders to interventions are discussed.