An item response theory evaluation of the diagnostic criteria for antisocial personality disorder

Description

Aim: The presence of antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) has important
consequences for clinical decision making. This study therefore investigated the
psychometric properties of the ASPD criteria as defined by DSM-IV and assessed
by the SCID-II (First, 1994).

Methods: Clinician ratings of the SCID-II ASPD
criteria from the Norwegian Network of Personality Focused Treatments Programs (N=3313 patients) were analysed with parametric and non-parametric methods (Confirmatory Mokken Scale Analysis; Empirical Kaiser Criterion) to test whether they form a unidimensional scale. A graded response model (an item response theory model for polytomous items) was fitted to evaluate the local reliability for different latent trait ranges, and to ascertain whether the items were free of measurement bias due to gender.

Results: Our findings suggest that ASPD could be reflected by a unidimensional construct which could be measured reliably at the upper range of the latent trait scale. Differential item functioning across gender was restricted to two criteria and had little impact on the latent ASPD trait scores. Additionally, patients fulfilling both the adult ASPD criteria and Conduct Disorder criteria had very similar latent trait distributions to patients fulfilling only the adult ASPD criteria.

Discussion: The results of our study suggest that ASPD as assessed with the SCID-II can be conceived of as a unidimensional construct, which can be measured with minimal measurement bias across gender in clinical samples. The added value of CD criteria for establishing an ASPD diagnosis was not supported by our findings.

Period	30-Jun-2018
Event title	Society for Psychotherapy Research 49th Annual International Meeting
Event type	Conference
Location	Amsterdam, NetherlandsShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International