Behaviordata’s
reports are backed by more than 40 years of research and
refinement. The system of
analysis used by Behaviordata Inc. was designed by Joseph
C. Finney, M.D., Ph.D., a psychiatrist and a clinical psychologist
at the University of Kentucky, with the help of research
grants from the National Institute of Mental Health and U.S.
Vocational Rehabilitation Administration.
The predecessor to Behaviordata, Inc., Behaviordyne, Inc.
was founded in 1971 and was a leader and innovator in the
field. Behaviordyne was the first computerized MMPI
scoring service to produce a narrative report. Behaviordata
purchased this company in 1996, and incorporated under the
new name. Behaviordata's most utilized service, is
that of psychodiagnostic narrative reports taken from the
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2TM
or
the California Psychological InventoryTM. Behaviordata
reports greatly expand the usefulness of these tests by applying
modern computer technology to their scoring and interpretation. Behaviordata,
Inc.'s reports for the MMPI-2 and CPI are enhanced with
hundreds of added scales, factors, and indices.
The Behaviordata, Inc. Minnesota Multiphasic Personality
Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) and California Psychological Inventory
(CPI) system of test analysis is unique in that it is the
only system that was based upon a real-world population at
the time of its development.
The sophisticated computer
algorithms used to analyze the MMPI-2 and CPI were developed
initially by the prestigious University of Kentucky Research
Foundation (UKRF) in a major research project conducted from
1956 to 1969. More than 2,000 subjects were tested
using both inventories and rated by experienced clinical
psychologists. Instead of utilizing family members
of psychiatric patents, visitors to psychiatric hospitals,
or college students, Dr. Joseph Finney, the originator of
the system, with the aid of a Health, Education and Welfare
grant, obtained a real-world sample that truly reflected
the U.S. population. Finney's approach was to find
a sample of ordinary citizens that would match the U.S. Census. He
did this by contacting service organization such as Rotary,
Kiwanis, the Lions, and Shriners, as well as PTAs, etc. and
offered to donate an amount of money to their organizations
if they would participate in his research.
To represent the
population of poverty-level people, he went to Departs of
Unemployment and randomly selected persons who matched the
US. Census profiles: he offered to pay them if they
would participate in his research by taking the MMPI. His
samples of people who had diagnosable conditions came from
hospitals and clinics. Each patient was re-evaluated
by Dr. Finney's research team to be sure that the person
truly met the clinical criteria for these conditions.
Behaviordyne
was founded to bring the UKRF assessment system to the commercial
marketplace. In
the ensuing years, Behaviordata has collaborated with the
original authors to continue the research, development, and
refinement of the UKRF system for the MMPI-2 and CPI. Enhancement
continues today with the guidance of David S. Nichols, Ph.D.,
the President of the Behaviordata Scientific Board, to ensure
that Behaviordata's reports will define the state of the
art.
PRINCIPALS OF BEHAVIORDATA
Dr. David S. Nichols
Dr. David S. Nichols earned his M.S. in General Psychology in 1970 and Ph.D. in 1973. Most of his clinical work has been with acute and chronic psychiatric patients at Dammasch State Hospital in Wilsonville, Oregon, and at Oregon State Hospital, Portland, from which he retired in 1999. His theoretical orientation is eclectic, in which interpersonal and learning principles figure prominently.
Nichols’ research and assessment interests focused early on structured personality inventories, particularly the MMPI/MMPI-2TM, and the majority of his more than 30 publications are related to this instrument. He has taught courses, seminars, and workshops, and has presented papers in objective personality assessment and MMPI/MMPI-2TM interpretation in the United States and Europe since 1973. His major publications include the MMPI-2TM Structural Summary (with Roger L. Greene), published by Psychological Assessment Resources, Psychological Assessment with the MMPI-2TM (with Alan F. Friedman, Richard Lewak, and James T. Webb), published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and, most recently, Essentials of MMPI-2TM Assessment, published by John Wiley & Sons.
Dr. Diana Sullivan Everstine
A native San Franciscan, she received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology in 1974. Dr. Murray Tondow was the Chairman of her doctoral dissertation. After graduation, Dr. Everstine went on to become an expert on trauma, emergency response, pre-employment screening, and threat assessment. She has co-authored three professional textbooks. She has taught Psychological Aspects of Pre-employment Screening at San Jose State University, and at The Criminal Justice Training Center.
After graduation Dr. Everstine had extensive experience in working with law enforcement agencies in psychological profiling and threat assessment. She has 30 years of experience as a trained hostage negotiator. She has worked for numerous corporations as a consultant for executive search to assess employee threats and risks. In 1996, she became the President of Behaviordata, Inc., which has provided behavioral assessment and screening to nuclear plants since 1974. To date, none of Behaviordata’s clients have been compromised, and the Behaviordata process has never been successfully challenged.
Dr. Louis Everstine
Dr. Everstine is a graduate of the New School for Social Research, New York City. He holds Master’s degrees in Science and Public Health, and his doctorate is in Psychology. He was a graduate student of Philosophy at Oxford University (Linacre College) where he worked and taught in the Department of Social and Administrative Studies. Upon his return to the United States, he worked as a researcher in the Human Factors in Technology Research Group and The Center for Research in Management Science at U.C. Berkley. He is the author of five psychology textbooks. He is a fellow of the Mental Research Institute, Palo Alto, and a member of the Oxford and Cambridge Club, London.
Dr. Joseph C. Finney
Joseph C. Finney, the author of the MMPI-2™ and CPI™ interpretation programs, was born in 1927 in Urbana, Illinois. He received his B.A. degree, (Phi Beta Kappa), in Chemistry at Vanderbilt University in 1946, and his M.D. degree at Harvard in 1949. After a medical internship at Johns Hopkins Hospital, he did graduate study in experimental biology at U. C., Berkeley, and completed residency training in psychiatry at the Palo Alto V.A. Hospital (Stanford); 1953-1956. At the same time, he was enrolled in graduate study at Stanford for the Ph.D. in psychology, which was awarded in 1959. He learned about the MMPI™ and CPI™ at U.C., Berkeley under Harrison Gough, taking him as a lifelong mentor.
Dr. Finney began collecting data and developing scales, with an eye to devising the first automated interpretation program for the MMPI™ and CPI™, in the mid-and-late ‘50s. This preliminary work continued until 1966 when, while at the University of Kentucky, he received research grants from the National Institute of Mental Health and the Vocational Rehabilitation Service to support the collection of new normative data, and to operationalize the first version of his computerized MMPI™/CPI™ interpretation system.
Dr. Finney and the University of Kentucky later licensed his program to Behaviordyne in Palo Alto and, more recently, to Behaviordata in San Jose, in order to make the program more available to others, particularly private practitioners in psychology and psychiatry. During the 1970s, Dr. Finney developed major additions to the computer interpretation service, including procedures for identifying patterns of alcoholism and drug abuse, for violence, for estimating suitability for different kinds of work, and for qualities affecting marriage counseling. In the 1980s and ‘90s, Dr. Finney continued to revise and update his program, but, in order to accommodate other interests, he has recruited David S. Nichols as his designated successor for updating and improving the program.
Dr. Gary T. Miles
Gary T. Miles, PhD completed his doctorate in Clinical Psychology at the Pennsylvania State University in 1988. He subsequently completed his internship and post-doctoral fellowship at the Palo Alto VA Medical Center in Clinical Neuropsychology. He became a licensed Psychologist in California in March of 1990 and practices in the fields of neuropsychology, psychological assessment, and psychotherapy, with particular interest in ethnic minority issues, adolescence, and gender identity issues.
Dr. Rex Bierley
Dr. Rex Bierley received his first doctoral degree in Biopsychology in 1981, and then taught at the university level for seven years. He began respecializing in Clinical Psychology in 1986, completing this training in 1989. He completed his clinical internship (1988-89) and neuropsychology residency (1989-90) at the Veterans' Administration Hospital in Palo Alto, California and has been licensed in California since 1990. As a Clinical Neuropsychologist, he specializes in cognitive and personality assessment and works extensively with both older adults and head injury patients. From 1993-2001, he was the National Coordinator for Neuropsychologic Research on a national collaborative head injury research program for the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs (The Defense and Veterans Head Injury Program). He has consulted on many forensic cases involving dementia or head injury. He works with major corporations to assess the risk to the company from unstable or disgruntled employees. He also provides trauma counseling to officers in local law enforcement agencies.
Dr. Murray Tondow
Dr. Murray Tondow has been actively involved in psychology for over 50 years; having received his doctorate from USC in 1953. During this period his activities have been in academia, research, and clinical areas. His long term interests , dating back to the early 50’s, has been the utilization of computers in behavioral sciences. He has presented and published over 100 papers. His most recent paper, “An Alternative Methodology for Predicting Behavior” was presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science - Pacific Division 84th Annual Meeting - June 15-19, 2003. In 1971, Dr. Tondow founded Behaviordyne and served as President until 1986 at which time he retired from full time work. He is currently working as a consultant and conducting research in the area of building computer generated models to analyze and predict human behavior.
