Utility of the MMPI in a geriatric population

Despite the popularity of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), there exists a relative dearth of normative and validity research regarding its use with persons over the age of 60. Our investigation was designed to examine the MMPI performance of both a normal and a clinical sample of older men and women. Specifically, a nonpatient community sample of 204 subjects and an outpatient psychiatric sample of 30 subjects, between the ages of 60 and 90, were administered the MMPI as well as structured psychiatric interview, the Psychiatric Status Schedule (PSS). Results revealed that, on most of the MMPI scales, the mean scores were well above the norms (i.e., 5-10 t-score points). Through comparisons between the clinical and community subjects as well as between MMPI and PSS performance, the MMPI demonstrated substantial discriminative and concurrent criterion validity within this geriatric sample. The results of the study suggest that, with a few important exceptions, the MMPI, as generally utilized, is valid for use in the geriatric population.     

Utility of telephone assessments in an older adult population

Telephone assessments are commonly used in mental health research and may be especially beneficial in older populations. The current study assessed the psychometric properties of the Penn State Worry Questionnaire (T. J. Meyer, M. L. Miller, R. L. Metzger, & T. D. Borkovec, 1990) and the Beck Depression Inventory--II (A. T. Beck, R. A. Steer, & G. K. Brown, 1996), when administered over the telephone in an older adult population. Results indicate no differences in mean symptom level or internal consistency across two modes of administration. Correlations between the in-person and telephone-administered measures and diagnostic categories suggest adequate validity of the telephone-administered measures. With this demonstrated evidence, the telephone assessment method can be applied in a variety of research and clinical settings.     

The Utility of Utility Analysis

Recent research on utility analysis that focuses on estimating the dollar value of performance gains was critically reviewed and a case was made that other metrics for expressing utility may be desirable. The need to validate the accu- racy of utility predictions was emphasized, and factors that could adversely affect their accuracy were described in a framework of criteria types and job types. A set of research propositions was offered and implications for future work on utility were discussed. In addition to its traditional role as an aid to decision making, utility analysis as a means to understanding the perform- ance construct was emphasized.     

Utility and framing

Standard principles of rational decision assume that an option’s utility is both comprehensive and accessible. These features constrain interpretations of an option’s utility. This essay presents a way of understanding utility and laws of utility. It explains the relation between an option’s utility and its outcome’s utility and argues that an option’s utility is relative to a specification of the option. Utility’s relativity explains how a decision problem’s framing affects an option’s utility and its rationality even for an agent who is cognitively perfect and lacks only empirical information. The essay rewrites standard laws of utility to accommodate relativization to propositions’ specifications. The new laws are generalizations of the standard laws and yield them as special cases.     

自由与功利之间——密尔伦理思想的双重诉求

约翰·斯图亚特·密尔是一个功利主义者,更是一个自由主义者.功利原则与自由原则是密尔伦理思想中的两个密切相关的基本原则,功利原则以最大多数人的最大幸福为终极价值诉求,自由原则则赋予个体的自由权利以价值优先性.密尔的一生都致力于以功利原则为哲学基础来证明个体自由,致力于论证功利主义与自由主义的一致与契合,但实际上若要追求功利原则和自由原则的融合就决定了他既不能执守严格的功利主义,也无法坚持一般的自由主义.因此,功利主义不是自由主义最好的哲学基础.     

Utility,Informativity and Protocols

Recently, natural language pragmatics started to make use of decision-, game-, and information theoretical tools to determine the usefulness of questions and assertions in a quantitative way. In the first part of this paper several of these notions are related with each other. It is shown that under particular natural assumptions the utility of questions and answers reduces to their informativity, and that the ordering relation induced by utility sometimes even reduces to the logical relation of entailment. The second part of the paper shows how different proposals (using either protocols or likelihood functions) to measure the relevance/utility of non-partitional questions come down to the same thing.     

Utility of Philosophy

Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research - Philosophy is an incredible intellectual enterprise that promotes comprehensive exposure to creative and critical thinking. The paper is...     

Actual Utility, The Objection from Impracticality, and the Move to Expected Utility

Utilitarians are attracted to the idea that an act is morally right iff it leads to the best outcome. But critics have pointed out that in many cases we cannot determine which of our alternatives in fact would lead to the best outcome. So we can’t use the classic principle to determine what we should do. It’s not “practical”; it’s not “action-guiding”. Some take this to be a serious objection to utilitarianism, since they think a moral theory ought to be practical and action-guiding. In response, some utilitarians propose to modify utilitarianism by replacing talk of actual utility with talk of expected utility. Others propose to leave the original utilitarian principle in place, but to combine it with a decision procedure involving expected utility. What all these philosophers have in common is this: they move toward expected utility in order to defend utilitarianism against the impracticality objection. My aim in this paper is to cast doubt on this way of replying to the objection. My central claim is that if utilitarians are worried about the impracticality objection, they should not turn to expected utility utilitarianism. That theory does not provide the basis for a cogent reply to the objection. Originally presented at the 2004 Bellingham Summer Philosophy Conference, Bellingham Washington, August 2, 2004, with comments by Gustaf Arrhenius and Elizabeth Harman. I am grateful to Arrhenius and Harman for their challenging criticism, as well as to Chris Heathwood, Michael Zimmerman, Owen McLeod, Elinor Mason, Eric Moore and other participants at the Bellingham Conference for comments and suggestions. In October, 2004 I discovered Mark Strasser’s ‘Actual Versus Probable Utilitarianism’. I see that in that paper Strasser anticipates a number of the points I make here.     

Utility, Subjectivism and Moral Ontology

The paper seeks to show that underlying Bentham's concept of utility is a commitment to a criterion or principle of moral status distinguishing morally relevant beings from the morally irrelevant. Further, that the notion of moral status is ultimately inconsistent with Bentham's utility; that it implies something like a Kantian ethic barring the use of morally relevant beings as mere means to some other's satisfaction, an ethic which suitably interpreted may be more useful in defence of some concerns for which Bentham has traditionally been cited, animal rights for example. The paper concludes by noting the history and politics of moral status and argues that the concept involves a fusion of fact and value, the empirical and the evaluative, undermining assumptions of a rigid separation of the two and the consequent essential subjectivity of the latter.     

Selection Utility Models and Break-Even Analysis

Selection utility models have been developed over a number of decades and in recent years a standard terminology has been developed for evaluating the financial outcome of selection procedures. The aim of the present study is to analyse some of the features of the basic models and to show that they can be formulated in ways which will identify economic break-even points and clarify decision-making for HR professionals. It is shown that the standard deviation of monetary job performance and length of expected employment are much more sensitive variables than selection ratios and validity coefficients and that this is especially the case when length of employment is a function of test validity.     

Promising,Expecting, and Utility

While openmindedness is often cited as a paradigmatic example of an intellectual virtue, the connection between openmindedness and truth is tenuous. Several strategies for reconciling this tension are considered, and each is shown to fail; it is thus claimed that openmindedness, when intellectually virtuous, bears no interesting essential connection to truth. In the final section, the implication of this result is assessed in the wider context of debates about epistemic value.     

Utility Aspects of Personality and Peformance

The purpose of this study is threefold: (a) to examine the extent to which two personality measures appear to function in an Industrial Organizational context, but in a different language and culture; (b) to study their construct and concurrent validity; and (c) to relate these findings to utility analyses. These three tasks were done to determine the extent to which personality measurements can provide a positive financial outcome to organizations in a selection situation. Swedish versions of 2 well-known U.S. tests, Service First, a customer service measure, and the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI; Hogan & Hogan, 1992), a Big Five personality measure, were administered to several hundred employees, job applicants, and students in a range of organizations. Despite considerable differences in culture (especially attitudes to service, education, and life goals), the Swedish norms and factor structures for the 2 tests were remarkably similar to those of the United States, confirming that tests of this type can be used in different environments. When compared with each other and with the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory (Consulting Psychologists Press, 1991, 1995), the results also confirmed that their construct validity had survived the transformation to anew culture and language. Two concurrent criterion validity studies showed that the correlation between test results and different kinds of criterion data were highly significant, suggesting that the tests can be used to forecast work performance. Additional information was obtained from the 2 companies concerning salaries and performance variation and these were used to perform a utility analysis to show the substantial financial benefit of using personality testing for selection as well as in a downsizing context.