Narrative Report
This is the major long-term focus of our work. This report includes the Narrative Interpretation, Profile Graph, Supplemental Scales, and Critical Items.
The Narrative Interpretation is a detailed, highly individualized narrative description which includes the following four sections.
- Test Taking Attitude
- Symptoms and Personality Characteristics
- Diagnostic Impression
- Treatment Considerations
Our interpretive reports are assembled very largely one sentence at a time. The algorithms then generate a dictation-formatted report. About three-fourths of these reports now contain the new Adaptation and Attachment Hypotheses section, an exploration of Etiology for the more frequent codetypes.
The narrative interpretations are actuarial to the fullest extent. That is, the content of the narrative comes from the detailed scrutiny of cases with similar patterns of test scores. Given the wide range of sources of protocols and different contexts of testing, Caldwell Report descriptions and predictions must be understood to be probabalistic rather than deterministic.
Extra caution may be needed in understanding the Caldwell Report in forensic settings, as the narrative section regarding personality may be misunderstood or taken out of context. This is because the MMPI-2 is an instrument that tends to focus primarily on maladjustment and psychopathology, as opposed to psychological strengths. As a result the maladaptive aspects of personality are typically the main focus of the narrative. In some forensic settings, this focus on less functional personality aspects may present an incomplete picture of the individual being assessed.
Not only for use in psychotherapy, the Caldwell Report interpretations have mattered greatly in:
- Criminal Trials
- Civil Litigations
- Personnel Selection
- Insurance And Retirement Benefits Determinations
- Drug and Alcohol Treatment Settings
and a host of other settings where the status of an individual’s personality makes a difference.
Thus, the Caldwell Report interpretations of the MMPI-2 Test remain highly informative as to psychological aspects in the individual’s complaints and the clinical picture more generally across multiple contexts of assessment.