Structured Inventory of Malingered Symptomatology (SIMS)
Purpose: Screens for malingered psychopathology and cognitive symptoms
Format: Paper and pencil, Online administration and scoring via PARiConnect, Software
Age range: 18 years to 99 years
Time: 15 minutes
Qualification level: C
Complete Kit: includes SIMS Professional Manual and 25 Response Forms
The SIMS is a 75-item, true-or-false screening instrument that assesses both malingered psychopathology and neuropsychological symptoms.
- Can be used as part of a battery of tests to provide convergent evidence of malingering.
- Recommended as part of a comprehensive approach to any evaluation in which alternative hypotheses for response patterns should be considered.
- Provides five scale domains?Psychosis, Low Intelligence, Neurologic Impairment, Affective Disorders, and Amnestic Disorders?as well as an overall score for probable-malingering.
- Demonstrates sensitivity, specificity, and efficacy across both simulation and known-groups designs with honest responders, psychiatric patients, and clinical malingerers.
- Written at a 5th-grade reading level, the SIMS has demonstrated very good utility in identifying malingering across multiple studies.
