INITIAL VALIDATION OF THE PERSONALITY-ASSESSMENT INVENTORY SPANISH VERSION WITH CLIENTS FROM MEXICAN-AMERICAN COMMUNITIES

Psychological assessment of Hispanic populations are thwarted by the a bsence of clinical research on comparability of Spanish translations a nd the stability of their findings. In this study we examined the pote ntial usefulness of the Spanish Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI; Morey, 1991) for Hispanic clients residing in Mexican American commun ities. We administered the Spanish version on two occasions to 48 mono lingual clients and the Spanish and English versions to 21 bilingual c lients. Results indicated that the clinical scales had a moderate to g ood correspondence for Spanish-English (M r = .72) and good test-retes t reliability for Spanish-Spanish (M r = .79). Much more variation was observed for the validity scales and the treatment/interpersonal scal es. Also more variability was observed in the convergence of elevation s across administrations. Because of these mixed results, we discuss t he potential usefulness of the PAI clinical scales to screen for major psychopathology.