Estimating the efficacy of Fptsd Scale to report malingering of PTSD: A meta-analytic review

The assessment of psychological harm to crime victims has become a regular demand on forensic psychologists. Such evaluation requires not only the diagnosis of psychological harm, but also the differential diagnosis of malingering. For the malingering differential diagnosis of psychological harm, the MMPI-2 has the Fptsd scale. However, there is controversy as to the usefulness of this scale. As for this, a random effects meta-analytical review of sizes of experiments corrected by sampling error and criterion unreliability was designed. Eight primary studies were selected from which 12 effect sizes were extracted. The results showed that the Fptsd scale was significant and highly sensitive to the malingering of psychological harm in general (d = 1.51/delta = 2.08) and in all the conditions studied (i.e. experimental sample, type of design and contrast group) and of great practical usefulness in the detection and classification of malingering. In addition, it revealed specificity (discriminant validity) before the malingering of psychological damage. The implications for forensic practice of the results, limitations on generalization and increased validity on the Fp scale are discussed.