Readability of adult psychopathology inventories.

Although most manuals for psychopathology inventories suggest a minimal level of reading ability necessary for valid administration, supporting data are not always provided. To establish guidelines for clinical use of commonly used psychopathology inventories, this study examined the text and vocabulary complexity of 4 tests: Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2, Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-2, Basic Personality Inventory, and Personality Inventory Assessment. Analysis of the complexity of complete item sets showed that the inventories had overall reading levels at the 5th grade or lower, but measures of the difficulty of individual scales and vocabulary difficulty of the entire inventories showed that the 6th grade level is a better estimate