External validity study of a personality disorders screening test in a community sample

Background: A screening test for personality disorders was recently developed in Brazil, the Dimensional Clinical Personality Inventory - screening version (IDCP-SV). However, no relationship between this screening measure and other scales or external criteria was tested. Objective: To seek for validity evidence based on related criteria (e.g., other psychological tests) and external criteria (e.g., sample demographics). Methods: Sample comprised 804 participants from Sao Paulo (Brazil), most female and college students, with mean age equal to 29.65 (SD = 10.73). They answered the IDCP-SV and another screening for personality disorders (IPDS), a depression measure (EBADEP-screening), a scale assessing reasoning for living (EMVIVER), and a self-report for personality disorders categories assessment (SCID-II-PQ). Results: IDCP-SV identified 46.4% of community sample as positive for personality disorders. The positive group showed the great mean for almost all comparisions, including psychological tests and the demographics characteristics, including large expressive effect sizes. Discussion: Data suggest that the IDCP-SV discriminates a similar percentage of people from the community to what was reported previously using other screening measures; besides, the mean comparisons between groups showed good discriminative capacity by IDCP-SV items.