The Structured Inventory of Malingered Symptomatology (SIMS) is a psychometric test that measures neurological and psychiatric symptoms amplification. This tool is used both for clinical and forensic purposes. It can provide presumptive indication of malingering, that must be tested by other assessment tools.
The SIMS is a self-report screening questionaire made of 75 dichotomic items (true/false). From a psychometric point of view, this tool shows a high degree of sensibility and specificity.
The SIMS has been translated into many european languages: german, italian, spanish and dutch.
This test has also been used to to investigate, in medical-legal and forensic context, the distorting impact that the evaluative context itself exerts on the tendency of subjects with mental psychopathology (psychosis) to amplify or not the self-reported symptoms.