April 2019

Both the long and short forms of the MMPI-2 but not the MMPI-A commonly given to adolescents are available through this link.

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2) is the most used personality test in clinical settings in the United States; it is also the only personality test the results of which are recognized and used by that country's courts of law. Published in 1940, the MMPI was the first comprehensive test that was data-driven, that largely did away with theory, and it was first calibrated by asking inpatient and outpatient individuals of psychiatric hospitals with well-known conditions to answer the test as they would if honest. The MMPI-2 was published in 1989, with a larger and more diverse sample having been used as calibration, including not only individuals from the general population and individuals asked to pretend to be good or bad or to have a specific disorder but also taking into account the findings of many scientific studies that led to the inclusion of subscales and the supplementary scales.

The result was a test so long and so exhausting that virtually nobody is able to keep their answers coherent if an attempt at dishonesty was made. The fact that it is so successful at detecting malingering, among other types of faking, is why this test is used in U.S. court cases of many kinds and why it is also used for employment hiring and promoting, from emergency services to police to military personnel, and in the private sector too.

Using 567 true or false questions, rates the tester on 130 categories (validity scales included). Once validity of the answers (link goes to a search of scientific articles on the subject) is established, a profile is created employing the 10 Clinical Scales:

Hypochondriasis (Hs, a.ka. scale 1)
Depression (D or 2)
Hysteria (Hy or 3)
Psychopathic deviate (Pd or 4)
Masculinity/femininity (Mf or 5)
Paranoia (Pa or 6)
Psychasthenia (Pt or 7)
Schizophrenia (Sc or 8)
Hypomania (Ma or 9)
Social introversion (Si or 0)

Each of these is in itself composed of various other sub-scales and has a further Obvious / Subtle division that is important. The scales are typically referred to by their number, with Si being numbered as 0, as stated above and also shown in the image below.

The MMPI-2 produces T-Scores and Raw Scores. What you will be paying attention to are the T-Scores, not the Raw Scores, unless otherwise specified. T-Scores are not percentages, but may be translated into percentages. Usually, anything above a 75 T-Score denotes a very high ranking on that scale, that is, within the top 1% of the population. Likewise, anything above a T-Score of 65 falls outside the normal range (among the top 3 to 5% of the general population). On the lower bound, any T-Score below 35 would not be considered normal. This general guideline notwithstanding, keep in mind that these point ranges aren't rigid, that is, that some scales accept certain T-Scores as normal while other scales consider the very same scores abnormal.

If you are taking this for purely for yourself, then robust results on the validity scales allow you to push elevations even further, such that a 60 or 65 no longer seem important. However, should you proceed in that way, the subscales and research scales become more important because a main scale may be low and still the patterns it approximates could be key in fueling the problems that have led to other high T-Scores.

How to interpret your own MMPI-2 results?

Step 1:
Verify that your results are valid, and identify what bias, if any, your profile displays.
Step 2:
Once determined to be valid, see how your profile compares to the rest of the population on the 10 Clinical Scales, and analyze your strengths and weaknesses on each scale by looking at its components.
Step 3:
Pinpoint your dominant Defense Mechanisms by probing your style.
Step 4:
Use the supplementary scales to better understand yourself and your current psychological tendencies.

Click here for instructions on how to do Step 1, Verifying Validity, which is indubitably the hardest and most technical part of interpreting your own MMPI-2 results.

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Test (MMPI-2) individual results graph, including 3 main Validity Scales and all 10 Clinical Scales

Click to Enlarge.
This is the kind of graph that you would be given by a certified

psychologist in an official MMPI-2 interpretation report.

Seek the MMPI-2 at THIS ADDRESS.

The source code of the original script looks something like this. You can download the .html file that you will find and take the test offline at any point in the future.

How to download and take the MMPI-2, long and short versions, online for free, gratis

Click to Enlarge.
This is what you should see to create your MMPI-2 test file successfully.

The actual online test form appears as below:

Snapshot of a gratis, online form for the MMPI-2 test

This is what you when taking the MMPI -2.

Answer all the questions and click 'Score' at the bottom. NOTE: If you want to make sure that your computer is properly set up, answer a few questions, click score to check if all the scales appear; then close the file, reopen it, and take the test! NEVER CLICK SCORE MORE THAN ONCE without reopening the file or you will get inaccurate results and also the results of some scales will come up as "undefined".