An Electronic Validation of the Test of Memory Malingering (TOMM)

Within the context of a counterbalanced design, 46 students from a large state university in the southeast were administered the Test of Memory Malingering (TOMM) and the electronic version of the Test of Memory Malingering (TOMM-E). The TOMM was developed by Dr. Tom Tombaugh in 1996 and was originally designed to be administered in a paper and pencil format. The objective of this study was to establish equivalence between the computer-administered TOMM-E and the traditional paper-based TOMM. Each assessment consists of two trials and simple random assignment was used to determine which assessment format was administered to participants first. Time between assessment administrations varied but was approximately one week. Correlations between trials were high for both TOMM (.805) and TOMM-E (.755). Pairwise comparisons showed non-significant mean differences between all trials. ANOVA results indicated no significant mean differences between TOMM and TOMM-E trials (F = 1.756, p = .159, η² = .038). Levene's test revealed equal error variances for three trials: T1: F(1, 44) = 2.728, p = .106; T2: F(1, 44) = .779, p = .382), and E2 [(F(1, 44) = 2.002, p = .164)], but unequal variances for E1 (F(1, 44) = 10.849, p = .002). Mauchly's test showed a significant effect of test format order on scores. Implications, limitations, and future research recommendations are discussed.