E-ISSN : 2733-4538
This study examined the effectiveness of the MMPI-2 substance abuse scales, MAC-R, APS, and AAS, in differentiating between substance abusers and non-substance-abusing psychiatric patients. Results support the use of all three scales at assessing substance abuse problems. The incremental validity of APS and AAS in comparison to MAC-R was examined using a series of hierarchical regression analyses. Results indicate that AAS added substantially to MAC-R and APS in predicting substance abuse and that APS added only moderately to MAC-R and AAS. Although AAS demonstrated the superiority over APS in detecting substance abuse problems, the addition of AAS did not provide discriminative information beyond that provided by MAC-R alone. Optimal cutoff scores and classification accuracy were also evaluated. Suggestions were offered for furcher research to establish the clinical utility of the new scales in various settings.