which leads to my next question, I could try to secure funding but that could take a while and I haven’t had much success finding any applications for funding. The APA dissertation award is currently closed. Any links to funding opportunities?
Nope. The IPIP movement is open source alternatives for personality measurement, championed by Goldberg. It's a huge boon for ease of research and clinical use.
I'm with you right up until you get to the 'stronger than the MMPI' line. The MCMI is junky - no doubt about it. That isn't true of the MMPI. The MMPI (even moreso the RF) has a ton of extremely strong psychometrics. They are equal to, or better than, any of the IPIP instruments. IPIP also lacks a normative basis, numerous comparison groups, extended predictive literature, embedded validity indicators, or cut-scores to indicate clinical pathology. I'm all for open access instruments, but it's a bit much to say it's stronger empirically than the MMPI.
.Nope, it's an emerging measure through APA that is freely available. Here's the link to the full version, but there are also short versions as well.
https://www.psychiatry.org/File Library/Psychiatrists/Practice/DSM/APA_DSM5_The-Personality-Inventory-For-DSM-5-Full-Version-Adult.pdf
Of note, it doesn't have the huge research base supporting it yet (as it's a new measure) but at least it's free. As others have said, don't use the MCMI. It's trash
Agreed on most of the points above (fyi, the developing MMPI-3 will include an expanded item bank to ensure assessment of missing constructs like borderline). It comes down if the instrument is intended as a screener/research tool or if it is needed for a forensic purpose with a diagnostic utility. If you're screening for multiple areas numerous screeners quickly can stack up to the same time requirement. It's hard to say what is needed with a vague description of the project, although based on the MCMI use I suspect it is more than just normative personality.I certainly agree with the norm, cut score, and validity testing pieces for the MMPI and that the RF is an improvement. I still think there are some issues with the original item pools and validation (criterion-keyed for the original measure, which is problematic for reasons such as discriminant validity and homogeneity) of the MMPI on which the RF is based. Even the RF is lengthy, which may not be all that practical for cases in which you want to administer a large number of measures for a research protocol. So, I should have clarified, but if the OP just wants efficient assessment of personality domain and facet scores (and not for diagnostic or classification purposes), I do see some advantages to other free, more efficient measures. Totally agree that there needs to be more predictive literature and norming for the other measures I listed though. I also will acknowledge that I obviously clearly have a bias for favoring other measures over the MMPI. I am guessing on this one that we're going to have to agree to disagree though
