Screening for personality disorders: A new questionnaire and its validation using Latent Class Analysis

Background: We evaluated a new screening instrument for personality disorders. The Personality Disorder Screening (PDS) is a self-administered screening questionnaire that includes 12 items from the Personality Self Portrait (Oldham & Morris, 1990). Sampling and methods: The data of n = 966 participants recruited from the non-clinical population and from different clinical settings were analyzed using latent class analysis. Results: A 4-class model fitted the data best. It confirmed a classification model for personality disorders proposed by Gunderson (1984) and showed high reliability and validity. One class corresponded to “healthy” individuals (40.6 %), and one class to individuals with personality disorders (17.2 %). Two additional classes represented individuals with specific personality styles. Evidence for convergent validity was found in terms of strong associations of the classification with the Structured Clinical Interview (SCID-II) for diagnosing personality disorders. The latent classes also showed theoretically expected associations with membership in different subsamples. Conclusions: The PDS shows promise as a new instrument for identifying different classes of personality disorder severity already at the screening stage of the diagnostic process.