Utz, Sara J. (2021) The Efficacy of Standalone Versus Embedded Measures of Effort in Medicolegal Cognitive Assessments. Honours thesis, University of Southern Queensland. (Unpublished)
Abstract
Psychological assessments are regularly performed in the context of claimants seeking external benefits like compensation, with the level of benefit to be gained often predicated on the degree of assessed impairment. External benefits which are dependent on degree of impairment can lead an individual to invent or exaggerate functional deficits. It is therefore necessary to include assessment measures designed to help clinicians gauge whether poor cognitive test performances are due to genuine impairment, or contaminated by inadequate effort applied during the testing process. This observational quantitative study examines the base rates, concurrent efficacy, and cognitive performance correlations of three psychometric effort screening tools, for an Australian adult medicolegal sample: the standalone Rey 15Item Test (RFIT), plus two embedded measures derived from the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT) and the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Test (RCFT). Base rates of inadequate effort detection across the dataset are within the realm of literature malingering estimates. Concordance between the effort measures exceeds 85%. And perhaps most interestingly, significant performance differences across multiple cognitive domains and test variables are apparent between demographically-matched ‘inadequate effort’ groups (who scored equal to or below the cut-off of a given effort measure) and ‘adequate effort’ groups (who scored above the cut-off of a given effort measure). The robust effect sizes evident in this study indicate that if a test-taker fails one of these effort measures, consideration of broader patterns of cognitive test performance is a promising avenue to further evaluate the presence of feigning during psychological assessments.
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| Item Type: | Thesis (Non-Research) (Honours) |
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| Item Status: | Live Archive |
| Additional Information: | Current UniSQ staff and students can request access to this thesis. Please email research.repository@unisq.edu.au with a subject line of SEAR thesis request and provide: Name of the thesis requested and Your name and UniSQ email address |
| Faculty/School / Institute/Centre: | Historic - Faculty of Health, Engineering and Sciences - School of Psychology and Counselling (1 Jan 2015 - 31 Dec 2021) |
| Supervisors: | Adina Piovesana; Graeme Senior |
| Qualification: | Bachelor of Science (Honours) |
| Date Deposited: | 11 Aug 2025 22:49 |
| Last Modified: | 11 Aug 2025 22:49 |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | cognitive test ; effort ; Rey Fifteen Item Test (RFIT) ; Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT) ; Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Test (RCFT) ; base rate |
| Fields of Research (2008): | 17 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences > 1799 Other Psychology and Cognitive Sciences > 179999 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences not elsewhere classified |
| Fields of Research (2020): | 52 PSYCHOLOGY > 5299 Other psychology > 529999 Other psychology not elsewhere classified |
| URI: | https://sear.unisq.edu.au/id/eprint/52837 |
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