| Although the prevalence and social cost of substance abuse disorders has made them among the most frequently researched disorders of the past twenty years, many substance abuse assessment instruments have not used physiological measures of substance abuse as criterion for validation of their instruments. Furthermore, many other instruments contain items that myopically focus on a single substance: alcohol. The current project sought to establish the relationship between the substance abuse scales of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, 2nd Edition (MMPI-2), the most widely used personality and pathology measure currently published, and physiological measures of drug use. The study also aimed to explore further the relationship between the Drug Abuse Screening Test (DAST) and urine screen procedures, and to compare its efficacy as a drug use screener with that of the MMPI-2 substance abuse scales.;Seventy subjects admitted to an inpatient hospital facility a large Eastern city completed the MMPI-2, the DAST, and had urine samples collected at intake. The urine samples were screened for the presence of amphetamines, cocaine, opiates, barbiturates, benzodiazepines, cannabis and phenylcyclohexylpiperidine (PCP). All urine screens were tested using the Enzyme Multiplied Immunoassay Technique (EMITRTM) method, which tests the urine for drug metabolites. Of the 70 initial subjects, 37 completed valid MMPI-2 protocols. Scores on selected scales from the MMPI-2 were then correlated with both the DAST and the results from the urine screen. Results indicated that both the DAST and the MMPI-2 were able to predict which subjects would produce positive dug screens, although the DAST clearly showed greater predictive power compared to the MMPI-2. Item analysis of the MMPI-2 substance abuse scales showed relatively few items that directly address substance use other than alcohol, and showed items that only address alcohol were unable to predict use of other substances. These results suggest that (1) current MMPI-2 substance abuse scales may not be optimally suited to detect substance use other than alcohol, and (2) suggests items without wording directly pertaining to substance use, such as those on the Restructured Clinical Scale 4 (RC4) and Antisocial Practices (ASP) scales, may be able to supplement the substance abuse scales. |
