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The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) is a popular measure of psychosocial functioning and psychopathology in the assessment of individuals in a variety of settings. However, the method of construction employed with the MMPI more than 60 years ago with psychiatric patients challenges the applicability of the scales for determining the psychosocial functioning of individuals from different settings. The restandardisation conducted in 1987 made no effort to eradicate the item overlap that was a result of the criterion keying method with contrasted groups. Although restandardized and updated with more contemporary language and content, the original psychiatric constructs were retained in order to maintain continuity with its predecessor. The aims of this investigation were to develop a new structure for the MMPI-2 constructed at the item-level, empirically derived and which specifically represents the dimensions that are relevant and appropriate in evaluating the psychosocial functioning of personal injury claimants. This task included comparisons with a comparable scale-level analysis and developing optimal scoring strategies where items in components and facets are allocated weightings based upon their strength of association. Study 1 was conducted using a sample of 2989 personal injury claimants assessed in Australia and the United States of America. The final sample of 3230, included 241 normal individuals, was utilized to develop a scale-level structure from 79 standard MMPI-2 scales and subscales. A nine-component solution consisting of General Maladjustment /Emotional Distress, Asocial Beliefs, Social Vulnerability, Somatic Complaints, Psychological Disturbance, Impulsive Expression, Antisocial Practices, Stereotypic Fears and Family Difficulties was derived using principal component analysis. However, intercorrelation between components in the structure signaled the need to develop a structure that would eradicate problems that were perpetuated by item overlap. The second study was conducted with a set of best practice procedures with the same clinical sample of 2989 personal injury claimants as Study 1. Forty-one components were derived through principal component analysis. Through the application of a set of criteria, a 35-component solution was retained. The pattern coefficients from the allocation of items to components determined the weightings to be applied to each item. Further analysis of the 35 components derived a substructure of 37 facets. The 35 components included only 442 of the 567 items, with the reliability coefficients of the first 25 components that ranged between .5 and .97, and the remaining 10 components that ranged from .29 to .49. The latter unreliable components were not included in the final Structural Summary, leaving 25 components (400 items) and their 33 facets for interpretation. Hence, in demonstrating the utility of the newly-derived structure, only 25 components and their 33 facets were interpreted. The 25 components were grouped conceptually into six domains. In the emotional domain were Psychological Distress (PsyDist), Anger, Fears, Psychotic Symptoms (PsyS), Paranoia (Par), Irritability (Irrit), Elation (Elat), Fear of the Dark (FD), and Financial Worry (FinWo). Somatic Complaints (SomC), Sexual Concerns (SexCon), and Gastrointestinal Problems (GasP) made up the measures in the physiological domain. In the behavioural domain were Cognitive Difficulties (CogDiff), Stimulus-Seeking (StimuS), Discipline (Dis), and Delinquency (Del) whilst the interpersonal domain was formed by Social Withdrawal (SoW), Negative Interpersonal Attitude (NIA), Timidity (Tim), Lie, Dissatisfaction with Self (DWS) and Family Relationship Difficulties (FReD). Alcoholism (Alco) was the only measure in the substance abuse domain, and the gender domain was comprised of Masculinity (Mas) and Femininity (Fem). The third study established preliminary normative means and standard deviations using a small opportunistic Australian university student sample (N = 219). No substantial gender differences were found but gender norms were maintained to facilitate comparisons with the traditional MMPI-2 approach. Comparisons of frequency of 'true' item response between the Australian university student sample and the U.S. restandardisation sample found relatively little differences and permitted evaluation of between sample differences on components and facets. The utility of the structure was demonstrated with the illustration of two clinical case examples, and a comparison was made with the standard MMPI-2 scales and subscales. The Structural Summary for the MMPI-2 demonstrated discriminative measures of psychosocial functioning that were a result of no item overlap, and the ability to attend to the different levels of intensity of self-report items because of differential weightings.

Dieses Buch ruft das Genre Kino der (kollektiven) Ängste ins Leben und beschreibt und analysiert dieses Genre anhand beispielhafter Fallstudien nach dem 9/11. Es liefert vielschichtige Filmanalysen zu vier Hollywood-Filmen; Crash (2004), The Brave One (2007), The Company Men (2010) und The Purge: Election Year (2016). Diese Forschung stellt einen Versuch dar, eine abgrenzende Definition dieses Kinos als filmisches (Sub-)Genre zu konzipieren und einen Überblick über die Eigenschaften dieses Kinos zu geben, wobei besonderes Augenmerk auf post-9/11 Filme mit der Angst-Narrativ der inneren Bedrohung gelegt wird. Dieses Genre steht an der Schnittstelle ästhetischer Erkenntnisse, historischer Entwicklungen, kultureller Phänomene und politisch-ideologischer Schattierungen, was die Hybridisierung zu einem der Hauptmerkmale dieser Filmgattung macht. Diese Studie betrachtet das kollektive Angstkino nach dem 9/11 als eine Ansammlung historischer Ängste, von denen einige aus genau dieser Zeit stammen (wie der Patriot Act und die ständigen Alarmstufen Rot), während andere auf frühere Epochen der US-Geschichte zurückgehen (wie die Ankunft der ersten europäischen Siedler in einer unbekannten feindlichen Umgebung, die Hexenjagd in Salem, der Rote Schrecken, die Bürgerrechtsbewegung und die satanische Panik). Anders gesagt, das Buch untersucht die inneren Assoziationen der Filme mit einer Reihe historischer Ängste von der Gründung Amerikas bis zur Gegenwart. Darüber hinaus geht diese Studie den Echos dieser Ängste nach und beleuchtet ihre Ausdrucksformen und ihre Echos in anderen Filmen, literarischen Werken, Genres und Mythen. Obwohl die untersuchten Ängste oft mit relativ spezifischen Problemen verbunden sind (wie Race-Ängste und Kulturkriege, Kriminalitätsängste und Waffenkultur, Wirtschaftsängste und der Finanzcrash sowie politische Ängste und Wahlparanoia), sind sie immer noch überwiegend, nach Ansicht der Autorin, das Produkt eines halben Jahrhunderts neoliberaler Politik. / This book brings 'the cinema of (collective) anxieties' to life as a genre, and it describes and analyzes this genre based on exemplary post-9/11 case studies. Thus, it provides multilayered film analyses of four Hollywood movies; Crash (2004), The Brave One (2007), The Company Men (2010), and The Purge: Election Year (2016). This research constitutes an attempt to conceptualize a demarcating definition of this cinema as a cinematic (sub)genre and to provide an outline of the traits and characteristics of this cinema while paying special attention to the cycle of post-9/11 movies depicting the fear narrative of internal threat. This genre stands at a junction of aesthetic realizations, historical developments, cultural phenomena, and political-ideological shades, which makes hybridization one of the leading features of this cinematic genre. This study approaches the post-9/11 collective anxiety cinema as an accumulation of historical anxieties, some of which stem from this very period (such as the Patriot Act and the constant Red Alerts), while others date back to earlier eras in US history (such as the arrival of the first European settlers in an unknown hostile environment, the Salem Witch Hunt, the Red Scare, the civil rights movement, and the Satanic panic). In other words, the book explores the films' inner associations with bundles of historical anxieties from the inception of America until the current era. Furthermore, this study traces the echoes of these anxieties and highlights their forms of expression and their echoes in other movies, literary works, genres, and myths. Although the examined anxieties are often tied to relatively specific problems (like racial anxieties and culture wars; crime anxieties and gun culture; economic anxieties and the financial crash; political anxiety and election paranoia), they are still largely, in the author's view, the product of half a century of neoliberal policies.