To counter claims that the MMPI is too long, especially for adolescents, the new MMPI-A contains 478 items , thereby shortening the administration time, This can be shortened even further by administering only the first 350 iterns , still sufficient to obtain the validity and standard clinical scales. Thus, theMMPI-A is both strongly related to the MMPI and MMPI-2 (and their respective databases) but also has a number of important distinctive features of its own.