Date of Award

12-2016

Document Type

Doctoral Research Project

Degree Name

Doctor of Psychology (PsyD)

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Radhika Krishnamurthy

Second Advisor

Maria Lavooy

Third Advisor

John Lavelle

Fourth Advisor

Mary Beth Kenkel

Abstract

Gender exerts a strong influence over psychopathology experience and expression. The Masculine-Feminine Pathology (Mfp) scale is a recently developed research scale for the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, Second Edition (MMPI-2), intended to reflect gender-influenced psychopathological symptoms. The current study was designed to examine whether Mfp scores serve as a useful moderator in the interpretation of MMPI-2 scores in terms of identifying gender-related symptom expression in an outpatient adult psychiatric sample. The sample consisted of 186 participants who had undergone outpatient psychotherapy. MMPI-2 scales include selected clinical scales, Restructured Clinical (RC) scales, content scales, supplementary scales, and Personality Psychopathology-Five (PSY-5) scales assessing various forms of psychopathology. The study examined male-female differences in Mfp scores and the link between Mfp scores and psychopathology scores, and tested the hypothesis that Mfp scores would predict psychopathology scores better than other gender scales of the MMPI-2 (Scale 5 (Mf), Gender Role-Masculine (GM), and Gender Role-Feminine (GF). Additionally, the study examined the relationship between Mfp scores and clinician-rated functioning scores (Global Assessment of Functioning, GAF). Results indicated that women had significantly higher mean Mfp scores than men. Women also had a significantly greater frequency of high Mfp scores than men. These results are congruent with the initial hypotheses for this study. Mfp scores correlated with several MMPI-2 psychopathology scale scores at a large magnitude, that it measures psychopathology. However, Mfp was not found to be superior to the other MMPI-2 gender scales in predicting gender-expression psychopathology, which was inconsistent with expectations. Furthermore, regression analyses indicated that Mfp did not substantially contribute incrementally to the other gender scales in predicting gender-related psychopathology. With regards to the relationship between Mfp scores and GAF scores, high Mfp scores for women, indicative of anxious distress, were inversely correlated with lower functioning on GAF as predicted. However, the expected reverse direction of the association did not materialize for men. Implications of the results are discussed and directions for future research are provided.

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