THE BIOGRAPHICAL PERSONALITY INTERVIEW (BPI) - A NEW APPROACH TO THE ASSESSMENT OF PREMORBID PERSONALITY IN PSYCHIATRIC RESEARCH PART I - DEVELOPMENT OF THE INSTRUMENT

The Biographical Personality Interview (BPI) is a research instrument for the retrospective assessment of premorbid personality traits of ps ychiatric patients. Its construction is based on results of a series o f investigations in which biographical data from psychiatric case note s were analysed with respect to premorbid personality traits. In order to avoid methodological shortcomings of the utilisation of clinical r ecords, an interview technique was developed. It is applied by two ind ependent, specially trained investigators who are kept ''blind'' regar ding any clinical data of the subject under study. One of them has to conduct the interview of a clinically remitted patient and to provide an interview protocol, the other one has to rate personality traits fr om that protocol along a large series of purely descriptive items. Sum scores for six personality structures (''types'') are calculated and the case is then assigned to the intra-individually dominating persona lity type according to the highest of these scores. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.