The Elemental Psychopathy Assessment (EPA): Factor Structure and Construct Validity Across Three German Samples

Psychopathy is deemed an important construct in forensic settings. Consequently, its theoretical basis and measurement are relevant to researchers but also to criminal justice administrators and decision-makers. The Elemental Psychopathy Assessment (EPA) is a recently developed self-report scale designed to measure psychopathic traits based on the five-factor model, one of the most comprehensive frameworks of general personality. Recent research provided initial support for the reliability and construct validity of the EPA, and exploratory factor analyses yielded a four-factor structure across different samples from the United States. Independent and confirmatory assessments of the construct validity and factor structure of the EPA are, however, pending. Across three independent, non-American samples (accumulated N = 1,803), we examined its content and factorial validity. We corroborated the proposed four-factor structure by means of both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses (CFA). Item-based CFA further indicated that the EPA items adequately measure the scales that they were initially assigned to. Taken together, the EPA is a psychometrically sound assessment tool for psychopathy. Given its substantial overlap with basic units of personality, the EPA represents a valid instrument to investigate psychopathy from a dimensional, trait-based perspective. Public Significance Statement The present study advances the assessment of psychopathic traits from a general personality perspective using the Elemental Psychopathy Assessment (EPA) developed by Lynam et al. (2011). Our research findings indicate that the EPA scales adequately capture psychopathic traits, whereby confirmative analyses of their latent structure suggest using 15 out of the originally proposed 18 facets when EPA factor, but not facet, scores are of interest.