The Counseling and Psychological Services Center (CPSC) has endeavored since 2005 to find a personality test that will fulfill the needs of FIU’s very diverse student population. Personality tests need to be reliable (meaning upon re-testing you get a similar result) and valid (meaning the test needs to measure areas it is supposed to measure).

After the CPSC studied several personality measures, staff focused on the Millon College Counseling Inventory (MCCI), a new 150-item self-report inventory, with the primary goal of assessing personality styles. 209 FIU students volunteered to participate in the study (mean age = 23.81 years). 74% of these students belonged to an ethnic minority. Reliability & validity analyses yielded similar results as other university counseling centers that did not have a large minority enrollment.  Accordingly, it can be concluded that this instrument is a valid measure for an ethnically diverse student body.

These results have been accepted for presentation at the 19th International Congress of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology in Bremen, Germany.

The CPSC is very proud to finally find a psychometrically sound measurement that will help fulfill the needs of our very diverse student population.

AUTHORS: Dornheim, L., von Harscher, H., Gomez, C., Pellegrini, A., Ramnath, R. (July 2008). The Millon College Counseling Inventory (MCCI): Reliability and validity in an ethnically diverse sample. Poster accepted at the 19th International Congress of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology, Bremen, Germany.