Back Pain Patients' Compliance with Vocational Rehabilitation: Use of the MMPI and HAT to Predict Outcome

The use of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and the Health Attribution Test (HAT) for predicting referral compliance to a state vocational rehabilitation program was evaluated. Subjects included 53 patients (26 males, 27 females) who were chosen at random three to 18 months following discharge from an inpatient chronic and spinal pain center. Subjects were administered the MMPI and HAT upon hospital admission and seven outcome measures of referral compliance were obtained. A discriminant analysis was performed to test the hypothesis that certain items would best discriminate compliance. Most discriminative of compliance was the MMPI validity scale K (Wilks Lambda = .751, p ≤ .033). A regrouping of data into two groups, active and inactive, yielded ego strength (MMPI, ES) and ability to trust others (PA) as significant differentiating variables