The Alternative DSM-5 Personality Disorder Traits Criterion: A Comparative Examination of Three Self-Report Forms in a Danish Population

The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association, 2013a) offers an alternative model for Personality Disorders (PDs) in Section III, which consists in part of a pathological personality traits criterion measured with the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5). The PID-5 selfreport instrument currently exists in the original 220-item form, a short 100-item form, and a brief 25-item form. For clinicians and researchers, the choice of a particular PID- 5 form depends on feasibility, but also reliability and validity. The goal of the present study was to examine the psychometric qualities of all 3 PID-5 forms, simultaneously, based on a Danish sample (N = 1376) of 451 psychiatric outpatients and 925 community-dwelling participants. Scale reliability and factorial validity were satisfactory across all 3 PID-5 forms. The correlational profiles of the short and brief PID-5 forms with clinician-rated PD dimensions were nearly identical with that of the original PID-5 (rICC = .99 and .95, respectively). All 3 forms discriminated appropriately between psychiatric patients and community-dwelling individuals. This supports that all 3 PID-5 forms can be used to reliably and validly assess PD traits and provides initial support for the use of the abbreviated PID-5 forms in a European population. However, only the original 220-item form and the short 100-item form capture all 25 trait facets, and the brief 25-item form may be ideally limited to preliminary screening or situations with substantial time restrictions.