Fundamental topics in the personality disorders: Candidate trait dimensions from lower regions of the hierarchy.

Abstract

Many assessment approaches for the personality disorders use upper regions (small number of broad traits) of the personality hierarchy. These studies examined lower regions (larger number of more narrow traits). In Study 1 judges translated personality disorder diagnostic criteria into lay language and verified translation quality. Study 2 analyzed 55 lay Ss' organization of those descriptors to derive 39 groupings of diagnostic criteria, with a corrected Rand agreement index of .94 across divergent analytic methods. Study 3 checked those methods on a problem with a known solution and 50 new Ss, finding a .80 agreement index with the known solution. Finally, to prevent subsjectivity in factor naming, Study 4 used pools of judges to name the content groups and 12 lay Ss for a recapture test of the meaning and discriminability of the names