Detecting Symptom Exaggeration in Compensation-Seeking Individuals, Psychotherapy Clients, and Individuals Referred for Job Assessments: Psychometric Features of the French and Dutch Versions of the Self-Report Symptom Inventory

Objective: The Self-Report Symptom Inventory (SRSI) is a relatively new instrument to detect symptom exaggeration. It contains a mix of plausible and pseudosymptoms, the rationale being that people who intend to exaggerate symptoms will overendorse both types of symptoms, whereas individuals responding truthfully will selectively endorse primarily plausible symptoms. The present study examined whether there are any differences in Dutch and French versions of the SRSI as a first step in determining their psychometric equivalence. Method: Relying on a differential prevalence design, we compared the Dutch and French SRSI in a mixed sample of compensation-seeking individuals (n = 226), psychotherapy clients (n = 95), and job selection candidates (n = 130). Participants were tested at the same bilingual facility and either had a Dutch language background (n = 263) or a French language background (n = 188). Results: Internal reliability estimates of SRSI subscales were highly comparable across the two language groups. Both language groups exhibited a pattern in which compensationseeking individuals reported the highest level of pseudosymptoms, psychotherapy clients an intermediate level, and the job selection subgroup the lowest level. There was no difference in this regard between the two language backgrounds. Conclusions: Given the increasing diversity in the cultural backgrounds of clients, it is important for experts to have different language versions of the same instrument in their toolbox that possess a comparable quality. Our data show that the Dutch and French SRSI possess similar psychometric and conceptual features.