There are strong and compelling reasons for the careful selection of police officers, and careful assessment of candidates includes psychological assessment. The most commonly used instruments include the MMPI, MMPI-2 and the IPI. To assess the relative relationship of validity findings for the respective tests, 18 studies, which empirically related test findings to later police functioning, were reviewed in this study. The findings indicated both MMPI versions and the IPI provide modest correlations and effect size relationships to police behaviour (rs = 0.17 and 0.28, respectively). In addition, the IPI scores provided significantly higher findings along these lines. There continues to be a need for additional studies, as these results are based on only 18 studies, but the findings to date indicate better prediction of police job performance with the IPI. These results argue for increased use of the IPI, at times in combination with the MMPI-2, with increased attention to the normative samples and with increased assessment of the police, academy and corrections populations.
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