Psychometric analysis of the Minnesota Test of Critical Thinking

With the increase over the past two decades in interest in critical thinking instruction, reliable and valid means for measuring critical thinking are necessary. The Minnesota Test of Critical Thinking was developed to measure critical thinking as defined by the American Philosophical Association in 1990. The present purpose was to explore the structure and reliability of the intervention and its instantiation of the critical thinking framework. Analyses of responses from 151 adult participants gave estimates of reliability varying from .29 to .78. A factor analysis of the test scores supported critical thinking conceptualized as a single, latent trait. With further refinement, the invention should become a valuable measure of general critical thinking skills of upper-division secondary and postsecondary students.     

Minnesota Employment Counselor Activities

Employment counselors, counselor supervisors, managers, and counselor educators were surveyed in Minnesota concerning the amounts of time that are now spent and should be spent in eleven employment counselor activities. All respondents generally agreed on the amounts of time that are now spent and should be spent in the activities. They also agreed that there should be significant increases (p > .05) in the amounts of time that should be spent in counseling, teaching, and research/follow-up, and decreases in the amounts of time that should be spent in selection/intake and records/clerical activities. Employment counselors in main offices indicated that they now spend significantly less time than counselors in subordinate offices in counseling, consulting, and staff activities, and significantly more time in testing.     

Teen Females in Minnesota:

No abstract available for this article.     

The Minnesota interactive statistical system

The Minnesota Interactive Statistical System (MISS) is reviewed as a successful application of on-line minicomputing in an instructional and research context. The MISS system is described with regard to (1) the instructional and research needs which prompted its development, (2) its programming design, (3) its operating system, (4) its computer hardware requirements, and (5) the continued innovative minicomputing development that it has inspired.     

The development of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) was constructed at the University of Minnesota before and during World War II. In its developmental phase, the MMPI was conceputalized as an efficient way of detecting psychiatric disturbance. The test's construction was made possible by atypical cooperation between psychologists and psychiatrists, within the context of a crisis in the U.S. public mental health care system. The MMPI was designed to meet the diagnostic needs of psychiatrists. As such, it represented the operationalization of medical hegemony. However, the interpretation of the MMPI shifted significantly after the war, reflecting organizational reform in clinical psychology and changing professional relationships between psychologists and psychiatrists.     

Scientific computation: An interdisciplinary approach at Minnesota

This paper summarizes the welcoming talk at the Symposium on High-Performance Computer Applications in the Behavioral Sciences. It provides a brief overview of selected activities in scientific computation at the University of Minnesota Supercomputer Institute. These activities include international symposia and a graduate degree program.     

Construct validity of the Sivik Psychosomaticism Test and test of operational style: correlations with four Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) subscales.

To evaluate the construct validity (convergent and divergent) of the Sivik Psycho Somaticism test (SPS) and test of Operationality (OPER), Pearson correlation coefficients between SPS scales and subscales, OPER and Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) subscales Hypochondria (Hs), Depression (D), Hysteria (Hy) and Alexithymia (Al) were calculated. Eighty-eight healthy individuals and 285 psychosomatic patients completed the SPS and OPER tests and MMPI; Hs, D, Hy and Al. The results show that most of the SPS subscales and OPER are significantly correlated to several MMPI subscales in both a normal and a psychosomatic population. The results are in concordance with the theoretical hypotheses and confirm the validity of the SPS and OPER constructs.     

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2: A Review

The new version of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, the MMPI-2, is described and critiqued in this article. The MMPI-2 has many positive features such as updated items, new norms, additional validity scales, and additional clinical scales for diagnosing problems not addressed by the original MMPI. There are, however, also many negative features for this test such as problems with the compatibility of code types and the representativeness of the norm group. Much research needs to be done before accurate interpretations can be made for all MMPI-2 profiles and the full potential of the test is realized.