Reliability of the MMPI-2 Subtle and Obvious scales with psychiatric inpatients.

Internal consistency reliability estimates were determined for the Wiener and Harmon (1948) Subtle and Obvious scales of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) with a group of psychiatric inpatients. Except for Subtle Scale 3 (Hy), Subtle scale reliabilities were unacceptably low, ranging from .32 to .59. In each case, inclusion of the Subtle items attenuated the reliability of the corresponding Full clinical scale. Removing the Subtle items resulted in comparable reliabilities across all Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) scales, ranging from .75 to .92. It was hypothesized that the poor reliability of the Subtle scales may attenuate the validity of the Full clinical scales.