Applicability of personality disorder criteria in late adolescence: Internal consistency and criterion overlap 2 years after psychiatric hospitalization

We examined internal consistency and criterion overlap of DSM-III-R persona lity disorder criteria in late adolescence, 2 years after psychiatric hospi talization. A total of 60 adolescents were assessed with the Personality Di sorder Examination, Within-category cohesiveness (internal consistency) was evaluated by coefficient alpha and mean intercriterion correlation (MIC), Between-category criterion overlap was evaluated by examining intercategory mean intercriterion correlations (ICMIC) between all pairs of disorders. I nternal consistency was low, with alpha less than. 70 for all except border line and dependent personality disorders. For most disorders, MIC values we re higher than ICMIC values. Our findings suggest that personality disorder criteria sets have limited internal consistency in older adolescents, Alth ough the criteria for most personality disorders correlate better with each other than with the criteria for other personality disorders, suggesting s ome degree of discriminant validity, comparison of these results with a sim ilar analysis performed shortly after hospital admission raises questions a bout personality disorder construct validity during adolescence.