Validity Indicator Profile (VIP®)

Designed to help meet the increasing need for a well-validated, psychometrically sound test that can provide empirical support in courtrooms and other legal institutions, the VIP test provides a broad spectrum of information about an individual's performance on an assessment battery. As a measure of response styles, test results help assess whether the results of cognitive, neuropsychological or other types of testing should be considered representative of an individual's overall capacities.

The VIP test is intended to provide support for conclusions that may impact the awarding of large sums of money or the determination of competence or culpability. As a result, the test is potentially useful to neuropsychologists, forensic, and clinical psychologists in a variety of situations, including:

Civil and criminal trials

• Competency-to-stand-trial evaluations
• Medical insurance examinations
• Social Security disability reviews
• Workers compensation examinations
• Rehabilitative treatment assessments

Quick Facts

About the Author

Dr. Richard Frederick is a forensic psychologist in Springfield, Missouri, where he specializes in the evaluation of criminal defendants. He conducts competency and criminal responsibility evaluations for the federal courts. Dr. Frederick is a diplomate in Forensic Psychology, American Board of Professional Psychology. He is a captain in the United States Navy Reserve. He graduated from Oklahoma State University with a doctorate in clinical psychology in 1986. He completed his internship at Naval Hospital Bethesda, Maryland. After finishing his tour of military duty at Naval Hospital Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, he completed a post-doctoral fellowship in forensic psychology at the Whiting Forensic Institute in Middletown, Connecticut.

• The VIP test contains verbal and nonverbal subtests, each of which can be administered independently.
• As a self-administered forced-choice validity indicator, the VIP test provides more information than a yes/no decision regarding malingering. The test helps assess the relationship between the individual's intention and the effort in completing the test. Based on this information, the report categorizes the individual's style as Compliant, Inconsistent, Irrelevant or Suppressed.  
• A graph of results helps make it easy to explain the results in hearing or court proceedings.
• When used as part of a battery of tests, it complements most personality assessments.
• When used as a screening tool, the VIP test can help indicate who may not benefit from further, more extensive neuropsychological testing.

Validity Indicators
The VIP test uses six primary validity indicators to classify an individual's performance as either valid or invalid.

Response Styles
The test also categorizes the individual's response style as:

• Compliant
  Suggests an individual's intent to perform well, along with the probability that his or her performance is an accurate representation of ability
• Inconsistent
  Suggests that the respondent is motivated to perform well but the effort is inconsistent or minimal
• Irrelevant
  Suggests that the individual intended to perform poorly and that he or she was most likely responding without regard to item content
• Suppressed
  Suggests high effort to perform poorly and that the individual tried to feign cognitive defects

Scoring rules for the VIP test were developed using a sample of more than 1,000 clinical and nonclinical subjects. Results were then cross-validated using an independent sample of 312 cases comprised of 5 criterion groups:

• Traumatic brain injured patients
• Suspected malingerers
• Normal subjects
• A "faking bad" group
• A group of random responders

Interpretive Report  

Respondent's answers are not only compared to a normative group but against the individual's own demonstrated abilities. The report contains two key sections:

• Classification of Test Performance
  Summarizes the respondent's approach to the assessment and includes a narrative explanation of the validity determination.
• Expected and Actual Performance Curve
  Graphs the test taker's performance on test items by ascending order of item difficulty. The visual representation gives the evaluator an immediate overview of the respondent's response style. A more detailed interpretation is included in the measurements and narrative that follow the graph.

View a sample Interpretive Report.

Profile Report  

The report provides a graphical representation of the test taker's performance on test items.

View a sample Profile Report.

Q Local™ Software - Enables you to score assessments, report results, and store and export data on your computer.

Mail-in Scoring Service - Specially designed answer sheets are mailed to us for processing within 24–48 hours of receipt and returned via regular mail.

- Allows you to score the assessments at your site.

What is the VIP test designed to do?
The VIP test is a validity indicator designed to be administered with tests that assess cognitive capacity. The individual's response style is classified into one of four categories: Compliant, Inconsistent, Irrelevant, or Suppressed. Results of the VIP test indicate whether the individual's performance on other tests of cognitive capacity should be considered a valid representation of his or her abilities.

What is a Performance Curve?
A Performance Curve is a graphical representation of an individual's average performance (proportion correct) in relation to item difficulty. Each point on the graph represents the individual's performance on 10 items of comparable difficulty. The average proportion correct is expected to be 1.0 for the easiest test items. As difficulty increases, test performance should decline. Once the individual has reached his or her ceiling of ability, performance is not expected to differ significantly from chance (.5). The Performance Curve can be used to assess an individual's response style.

What are the response style categories on the VIP test?
The author of the VIP Interpretive Report classifies an individual's response style, based on the shape of his or her Performance Curve, into one of four categories: Compliant, Inconsistent, Irrelevant, and Suppressed.

What is a Suppression Sector?
A Suppression Sector is an extended portion of the Performance Curve (20 or more consecutive running means for the Nonverbal subtest, 18 or more consecutive running means for the Verbal subtest) for which the running means are .3 or lower. Given that pure guessing or random responding will produce 50% correct answers on average, such extended segments of below-chance performance strongly suggest deliberate suppression of correct answers. The VIP classification rules assign a Suppressed classification to any performance that includes a Suppression Sector.

When is it appropriate to use the VIP test?
The VIP test is appropriate in any situation in which a clinician is concerned with accurately measuring an individual's cognitive capacity. Just as validity indicators are commonly reviewed prior to the interpretation of many personality tests, the VIP test allows clinicians to routinely assess whether cognitive testing has been completed with the full effort of the test-taker.

Use of the VIP test is indicated in many settings where the measure of the test-taker's cognitive capacity may influence litigation or compensation. The VIP test is particularly valuable in civil and criminal trial evaluations, medical insurance examinations, Social Security disability reviews, workers' compensation examinations, and rehabilitative treatment assessments.

Read about the use of the VIP test for persons with mental retardation.
Frederick, R. I. (1997). VIP (Validity Indicator Profile) Manual. Minneapolis: NCS Pearson, Inc.
Excerpted from the VIP (Validity Indicator Profile) Manual. Copyright © 1997, 2003 NCS Pearson, Inc. All rights reserved.

What are the limitations of the VIP test?
The VIP test is not intended to be used to assess the validity of cognitive testing with individuals who are known to have mental retardation. Use of the VIP test with individuals who are illiterate or who have significant mental retardation will generally result in their response style being categorized as "Invalid."

What is the diagnostic efficiency of the VIP test?
The table below presents a summary of diagnostic efficiency statistics for the Verbal and Nonverbal subtests individually and in combination with each other. In this table, sensitivity refers to the proportion of individuals in the noncompliant group who were found to demonstrate evidence of motivation to perform poorly, insufficient effort, or both. Specificity refers to the proportion of individuals in the compliant group who demonstrated no evidence of insufficient effort or motivation to perform poorly. The sensitivity of the Nonverbal subtest was 66%, and the specificity was 90%. Overall, the VIP Nonverbal subtest correctly classified 79% of the sample. The sensitivity and specificity for the Verbal subtest were 59% and 94%, respectively; the overall correct-classification rate was 77%.

The next table provides the diagnostic efficiency statistics, computed on the cross-validation sample, for the VIP subtests and for the PDRT (Portland Digit Recognition Test), RMT (Rey Memory Test), WRT (Word Recognition Test), and DCT (Dot Counting Test). In this table, sensitivity refers to the proportion of individuals in the noncompliant group who were classified as "did not intend to respond correctly" (classification was Irrelevant or Suppressed), and specificity refers to the proportion of individuals in the compliant groups who demonstrated an intention to respond correctly (classification was Compliant or Inconsistent).

The VIP test has moderately elevated sensitivity, but the sensitivity of the other tests is quite low. Specificity for all these tests is uniformly quite high.

Read about using the VIP test in court: Use of the VIP Test in Forensic Assessment
Frederick, R. I. (1997). VIP (Validity Indicator Profile) Manual. Minneapolis: NCS Pearson, Inc.
Excerpted from the VIP (Validity Indicator Profile) Manual. Copyright © 1997, 2003 NCS Pearson, Inc. All rights reserved.