Acessibilidade / Reportar erro

External validity study of a personality disorders screening test in a community sample

Abstract

Background

A screening test for personality disorders was recently developed in Brazil, the Dimensional Clinical Personality Inventory – screening version (IDCP-SV). However, no relationship between this screening measure and other scales or external criteria was tested.

Objective

To seek for validity evidence based on related criteria (e.g., other psychological tests) and external criteria (e.g., sample demographics).

Methods

Sample comprised 804 participants from São Paulo (Brazil), most female and college students, with mean age equal to 29.65 (SD = 10.73). They answered the IDCP-SV and another screening for personality disorders (IPDS), a depression measure (EBADEP-screening), a scale assessing reasoning for living (EMVIVER), and a self-report for personality disorders categories assessment (SCID-II-PQ).

Results

IDCP-SV identified 46.4% of community sample as positive for personality disorders. The positive group showed the great mean for almost all comparisions, including psychological tests and the demographics characteristics, including large expressive effect sizes.

Discussion

Data suggest that the IDCP-SV discriminates a similar percentage of people from the community to what was reported previously using other screening measures; besides, the mean comparisons between groups showed good discriminative capacity by IDCP-SV items.

Screening measure; personality test; diagnosis; personality disorders

Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo Rua Ovídio Pires de Campos, 785 , 05403-010 São Paulo SP Brasil, Tel./Fax: +55 11 2661-8011 - São Paulo - SP - Brazil
E-mail: archives@usp.br