[001- 003]ca review of crossing the cultural divide

8/2/2019 [001- 003]CA Review of Crossing the Cultural Divide

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JOURNAL OF CLINICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL NEUROPSYCHOLOGY

2008, 30 (3), 387388

2007 The Authorhttp://www.psypress.com/jcen DOI: 10.1080/13803390701587534

NCEN

Book Review

Crossing the cultural divide: Assessing Spanish-speakingHispanics with MMPI instruments

BookReviewBookReview

Assessing Hispanic clients using the MMPI-2

and MMPI-A. James N. Butcher, Jose Cabiya,

Emilia Lucio, and Maria Garrido. 2007.Washington, DC: American PsychologicalAssociation. Pp. 317. ISBN-13: 978159147

9246 (hbk). $69.95.

The primary purpose of this book is to providereaders with an up-to-date and inclusive overview

of how to apply the Minnesota Multiphasic Per-

sonality Inventory (MMPI) with Spanish-speaking

populations. While specifically identifying mental

health practitioners in the United States as their

primary target audience, I believe graduate stu-

dents in the clinical behavioural sciences would

also find this book useful as an ancillary course

text, as would university faculty and educators

who provide graduate level training in both psy-

chopathology and personality assessment. Sea-

soned researchers on cross-cultural psychologicalissues, however, are not likely to find this tome of

much benefit unless they want a volume that pro-

vides a concise summary of the various research

activities on the MMPI instruments among various

Spanish-speaking Latino populations.

This book is arranged in nine easy-to-read chap-

ters. The first chapter, which discusses the role of

culture in personality and the expression of psy-

chopathology, provides an appropriate opening to

the text. Also addressed here are the myriad of

biases and challenges involved in achieving equiva-

lence and appropriate validity when constructing

or utilizing personality instruments with ethnic

minority clientele. Some very helpful hints are pro-

vided about ways of minimizing bias when

conducting culturally competent psychological

assessments. An excellent aspect of this chapter is

the authors use of recent United States Census

Bureau data to illustrate the within-group diversity

of Hispanics living in the United States, and how

this diversity can exert a profound influence on the

choices clinicians make when determining which

instruments to use in assessing the Hispanic client.

On the downside, however, this chapter does not

address any of the unique yet important cultural

challenges confronting ethnic minority adoles-

cents. While the majority of research on immi-

grants and ethnic minorities focus on adults, there

is a growing body of knowledge on youths in cul-

tural transition (see for example, Berry, Phinney,

Sam, & Vedder, 2006; Fuligni, 2001; Lau et al.,2005; Rumbaut & Portes, 2001) that is not

addressed in the chapter. The emerging debate on

youth maladjustment due to acculturation gaps

between adolescents and their immigrant families,

for example, is one such fertile area for discussion.

Chapter 2 walks the reader through some of the

Spanish-language adaptations of the MMPI and

its revised version (i.e., MMPI-2). A very nice

historical account is provided about the use and

alterations of MMPI/MMPI-2 in half a dozen

Spanish-speaking countries, some going back to

over half a century ago. While the chapter headingalso lists the adolescent version of the MMPI

(MMPI-A), not much is mentioned about it here,

nor is anything said about why there may be a

dearth of relevant information on this adolescent

version of the instrument. Immediately after dis-

cussing Spanish-language adaptations of the

MMPI instruments, chapter 3 makes the logical

transition to casting the spotlight on MMPI-2

assessment with Hispanic clients living in the

United States. A history of past research on the

MMPI with Hispanics in the United States is

admirably discussed here, and very detailed expli-

cation of the conceptual foundations of the various

Spanish translations is offered. Perhaps the most

interesting aspect of this chapter is how skillfully

the authors enlighten the audience about which

examinee background variables ought to be con-

sidered when deciding on the appropriate language

versions of the MMPI-2 to use in applied settings.

The closing section of this chapter, where the

authors engaged in a rebuttal of what they labeled

the extreme culturist views, is less compelling,


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388 BOOK REVIEW

however. Not all culturist viewpoints are extreme.

Moreover, the fact that developing tests with

highly culturally specific content requires substan-

tial resource commitment does not mean that this

enterprise must be afforded lower priority. Suffice

it to say, the emicetic debate (which very simply

refers to the relative merits in cultural research offocusing primarily on the internal exploration of

psychological phenomena in local cultural terms

[i.e., emic] as opposed to transferring instruments

that were originally developed in one cultural con-

text to another [etic]), appears to be alive and well.

More detailed explication of the emicetic perspec-

tives in psychology is available elsewhere (Benet-

Martinez, 1999; Jahoda, 1995).

Chapter 4 addresses considerations for assessing

MMPI-2 protocol validity, while chapter 5 dis-

cusses the main clinical and content measures.

Anyone who has more than a passing familiaritywith the MMPI/MMPI-2 would quickly discern

that the interpretation strategies described in both

chapters are essentially similar to those used for

mainstream majority clients. Chapter 6 provides

very enlightening MMPI-2 clinical interpretations

using the case studies of four Hispanic clients with

a variety of circumstances and referral reasons.

Chapters 7 and 8, the two longest chapters in the

book, discuss the assessment of Hispanic adoles-

cents with MMPI-A. Chapter 7 offers a glimpse

into history by outlining the decades-long applica-

tion of the original MMPI with Hispanic adoles-cents before the MMPI-A was developed. A very

cogent description of the Spanish and Mexican

versions of the MMPI-A is also offered. More-

over, I found the case study descriptions and clini-

cal interpretation of the MMPI-A with six

Hispanic adolescents in chapter 8 to be very inter-

esting and well presented. Chapter 9, which

endeavors to provide an overall summary of the

text and also identifies areas for future research

using the MMPI with Hispanic immigrants, is a

natural way to conclude the book. In addition to

listing some areas for research consideration, theauthors spare no effort in warning about the diffi-

culties entailed in conducting research with transi-

tory immigrant populations. Conspicuously

missing in this section, though, is a description of

some research directions specifically for adoles-

cent Hispanic populations.

Some key and very practical information is pre-

sented in the four appendices of this text, including

contact addresses for the translators, scale develop-

ers, and distributors of the various versions of the

Spanish MMPI instruments; a list of references to

various works on the Spanish-language versions of

the MMPI instruments; and T-Score tables for the

Mexican versions of the MMPI-2 and MMPI-A.

Before concluding, it is worth noting that an

inescapable aspect of cross-cultural research and

practice is its complexity. And given this complex-

ity, no single text can please everyone entirely. Forexample, mental health practitioners who work

exclusively with Hispanic adolescents may find

only few aspects of this text to be of direct relevance

to them in their work. For these practitioners, the

edited text by Butcher et al. (2000) is well worth

reading as well. Non-Spanish speaking clinicians

who rely exclusively on translators/interpreters to

read and interpret English MMPI instruments to

Hispanic clients may not find any discussion here

about their practice. Overall, however, this text

admirably meets its goals. The writing is consist-

ently clear and lucid, and the ideas are very suc-cinctly presented. And, by the way, the summary

and chapter highlights that appear at the end of

each chapter would surely be a hit for readers.

Anthony T. Dugbartey

University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada

REFERENCES

Benet-Martinez, V. (1999). Exploring indigenous Span-ish personality constructs with a combined emicetic

approach. In J. C. Lasry, J. G. Adair, & K. L. Dion(Eds.), Latest contributions to cross-cultural psychol-ogy (pp. 151175). Lisse, The Netherlands: Swets andZeitlinger.

Berry, J. W., Phinney, J. S., Sam, D. L., & Vedder, P.(2006). Immigrant youth: Acculturation, identity,and adaptation. Applied Psychology: An InternationalReview, 55, 303332.

Butcher, J. N., Ellertsen, B., Ubostad, B., Bubb. E.,Lucio, E., Lim, J., et al. (Eds.). (2000). Internationalcase studies on the MMPI-A: An objective approach.Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Fuligni, A. (2001). A comparative longitudinal approachto acculturation among children from immigrant

families. Harvard Educational Review, 71, 566578.Jahoda, G. (1995). In pursuit of the emicetic distinc-

tion: Can we ever capture it? In N. R. Goldberger &J. B. Veroff (Eds.), The culture and psychology reader(pp. 128138). New York: New York UniversityPress.

Lau, A. S., McCabe, K. M., Yeh, M., Garland, A. F.,Wood, P. A., & Hough, R. L. (2005). The accultura-tion gap-distress hypothesis among high-riskMexican American Families. Journal of Family Psy-chology, 19, 367375.

Rumbaut, R., & Portes, A. (Eds.). (2001). Ethnicities:Children of immigrants in America. Berkley, CA: Uni-versity of California Press.

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