Applicability of personality disorder criteria in late adolescence: Internal consistency and criterion overlap 2 years after psychiatric hospitalization
Df. Becker et al., Applicability of personality disorder criteria in late adolescence: Internal consistency and criterion overlap 2 years after psychiatric hospitalization, J PERS DIS, 15(3), 2001, pp. 255-262
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.