Page No., 364-368.
Chris Piotrowski, University of West Florida, USA
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This study presents the results of an exploratory bibliometric ‘topical’ content analysis
regarding primary research concerning the use of the MMPI/MMPI-2 (all versions) in
pain studies published in journal articles 1992-2017. The major aim is: a) to determine
important clinical domains largely neglected by researchers conducting MMPI-Pain
scholarship during this time frame, and b) prompt more advanced study to map the
structure of scholarship regarding the extant MMPI-Pain literature. The database
PsycINFO was selected to obtain the pool of references based on ‘keywords’ search
like MMPI and Pain. The search identified a total of 498 peer-reviewed articles; of these,
200 references were determined to be mostly ‘primary’ articles, for inclusive years 1992-2017 that served as the data-set for the analysis. The author tagged each article with a topical descriptor and maintained a scoring template based on frequency counts across
categories. Based on the content analysis, topics that attracted 1% or less of the datapool of references (<2 articles) were identified. Thus, important clinical topical areas in the general psychological literature, but not generating much primary investigatory
interest by MMPI-Pain researchers are as follows: psychotherapy outcome, anxiety
states, emotion regulation, individual differences (i.e., gender, racial, ethnicity), the
elderly, self-image, cross-cultural, and social desirability. These findings clearly illustrate
that the extant body of literature on MMPI-related pain research is highly focused on
targeted investigatory domains and, concomitantly, neglects important clinical topical
areas. Perhaps this scientific disinterest reflects: a) select focus on clinical areas deemed
worthy of research attention by governmental and private granting agencies, b) the
practical challenges of obtaining unique medical patient groups, c) the ease of using
convenience samples, and d) editorial preference and related publication bias effects.
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