This latest version requires that the patient's false and true answers be transformed at an additional cost into raw scale and Standard scores by the publisher, who will also provide interpretative report writing.
Thus, research scientists or medical or psychology graduate students tend to score high on this scale, while psychiatric patients, juvenile delinquents, prison inmates and even high school students in general (who lack life experience and are still forging a solid sense of identity) tend to score low.
Another component of this test are the 20 Folk Concept Scales (18 in the CPI-434 version) – measuring Dominance, Capacity for Status, Sociability, Social Presence, Self-acceptance, Independence, Empathy, Responsibility, Socialization, Self-control, Good Impression, Communality, Well-being, Tolerance, Achievement via Conformance, Achievement via Independence, Intellectual Efficiency, Psychological-mindedness, Flexibility, and Femininity/Masculinity.
These scales are called "folk" as they attempt to capture personality themes that should be broadly cross-cultural and easily understood around the world.
Extremely high correlations are not likely to be found for personality measures because the scales typically try to assess rather broad behavioral tendencies.
The fact that it was developed and normed on non-psychiatric or non-clinical populations is regarded almost universally as part of its positive reputation and usefulness among psychologists.
CPI has generally straightforward and easily understood scale names, which makes it more user friendly for untrained professionals and test takers, for example.
[11] In addition, CPI has been shown to be a useful tool in predicting long- and short-term behaviors (e.g., college attendance).
[12] As a result, CPI fails to provide a parsimonious and theory-oriented description of the normal personality, which is one of its major criticisms.
It is unclear as to why some scales (e.g., dominance) are more basic and receive the status as "folk concepts" whereas others are labeled as "special purpose" (e.g., anxiety).
As a rule, clinicians also need to consider various factors such as life situation, reason for assessment, and overall pattern of scale elevation during result interpretation.