MEASURING PERSONALITY-DISORDER - THE USE OF SELF-REPORT QUESTIONNAIRES

This paper assesses the construct validity of the self-report Personality Diagnostic Questionnaire-Revised [PDQ-R] against the Personality Disorder Examination [PDE], a semistructured clinical interview, both instruments provide DSM-III-R personality disorder diagnoses and dimensional scores. The agreement of the two instruments was poor and the PDQ-R was better correlated with a number of personality trait measures than with scores on the PDE. On the basis of these findings, and the PDQ-R results of a group of highly functioning adults [n = 50], it was concluded that the PDQ-R is functioning as a personality trait measure rather than a measure of personality disorder diagnostic category.