A comparison of self-report and interview diagnoses of DSM-III-R personality disorders

A total of 73 psychiatric inpatients, all of whom (but two) fulfilled crite ria for at least one specific personality disorder (PD) on SCID-II PQ, were interviewed with the help of PDE. The self-report PD diagnosis was confirm ed in 35 (48 pel cent) patients. The diagnostic agreement between the two i nstruments was poor, yielding an overall weighted kappa of 0.22. Levelling off the PD base rates by increasing or decreasing the diagnostic threshold of SCID-II Pe and PDE respectively increased the overall weighted kappa to 0.38 in both instances. 70 pel cent of SCID-II Pe but only 29 per cent of P DE personality disorders were of extensive type. Most frequent important co -occurrences occurred between individual PD types within cluster 2. On the whole, the results confirmed the relatively pool agreement between self-rep ort and interview PD diagnoses. The utilization of self-report questionnair es in a clinical practice remains a controversial issue. (C) 1998 John Wile y & Sons, Ltd.