Comparison of the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status Effort Index and Stand-Alone Symptom Validity Tests in a Military Sample

The current study sought to report the base rates of Symptom Validity Test (SVT) failure in an active duty military sample as well as to compare the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS) Effort Index (EI) to stand-alone measures of symptom validity. SVT failure varied from previous studies and even among different subgroups in the current sample, ranging from 8% to 30%. The RBANS EI demonstrated modest sensitivity in the detection of suboptimal effort when compared with stand-alone SVTs. Although the index appears to add some utility to the detection of suboptimal effort, sole use of the EI as a measure of symptom validity could conceivably result in an unnecessarily high rate of false negatives.