The Schedule for Nonadaptive and Adaptive Personality-Youth Version (SNAP-Y) is a new, reliable self-report questionnaire that assesses 15 personality traits relevant to both normal-range personality and the alternative "DSM"-5 model for personality disorder. Community adolescents, 12 to 18 years old (N = 364), completed the SNAP-Y; 347…

The relationships between two measures proposed to describe personality pathology, that is the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-3) and the Personality Inventory for "DSM"-5 (PID-5), are examined in an undergraduate sample (N = 240). The NEO inventories are general trait measures, also considered relevant to assess disordered…

The Shedler-Westen Assessment Procedure (SWAP) is a personality assessment instrument designed for use by expert clinical assessors. Critics have raised questions about its psychometrics, most notably its validity across observers and situations, the impact of its fixed score distribution on research findings, and its test-retest reliability. We…

Informant reports can provide important information regarding the presence of pathological personality traits, and they can serve as useful supplements to self-report instruments. Ratings from a spouse may be a particularly valuable source of personality assessment because spouses are very well acquainted with the target person, have typically…

The proposed changes to the personality disorder section of the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" (5th ed.) places an increased focus on interpersonal impairment as one of the defining features of personality psychopathology. In addition, a proposed trait model has been offered to provide a means of capturing…

Despite being significantly correlated, there is evidence to suggest that the scales measuring Agreeableness from the Big Five Inventory (BFI) and the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R) do not capture identical constructs. More specifically, NEO PI-R Agreeableness contains content related to "honesty and humility" that is not…

The "DSM-5" proposal indicates that personality disorders (PDs) be defined as collections of maladaptive traits but does not provide a specific diagnostic method. However, researchers have previously suggested that PD constructs can be assessed by comparing individuals' trait profiles with those prototypic of PDs and evidence from the…

Lynam and colleagues recently developed a new self-report inventory for the assessment of psychopathy, the Elemental Psychopathy Assessment (EPA). Using a sample of undergraduates (N = 227), the authors examined the construct validity of the EPA by examining its correlations with self and stranger ratings on the Five-Factor Model, as well as…

Depressive personality disorder (DPD) was included in the appendix of the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders", Fourth Edition ("DSM-IV") for further study. Questions abound regarding this disorder in terms of its distinctiveness from extant diagnostic constructs and clinical significance.This study examines…

This article explores mindfulness skills in community and borderline personality disorder (BPD) samples. Study 1 includes 173 community volunteers and explores the psychometric properties of the French version of the Kentucky Inventory of Mindfulness Skills (KIMS). Study 2 explores the KIMS factor structure in 130 BPD patients and compares KIMS…

The Pathological Narcissism Inventory (PNI) is a recently developed multidimensional inventory for the assessment of pathological narcissism. The authors describe and report the results of two studies that investigate the higher order factor structure and gender invariance of the PNI. The results of the first study indicate that the PNI has a…

Although large epidemiological data sets can inform research on the etiology and development of borderline personality disorder (BPD), they rarely include BPD measures. In some cases, however, proxy measures can be constructed using instruments already in these data sets. In this study, the authors developed and validated a self-report measure of…

Linehan's biosocial theory suggests that borderline personality disorder (BPD) results from a transaction of two childhood precursors: emotional vulnerability and an invalidating environment. Until recently, few empirical studies have explored relationships between these theoretical precursors and symptoms of the disorder. Psychometrically sound…

Psychopathy is a personality disorder that includes interpersonal-affective and antisocial deviance features. The Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI) contains two underlying factors (fearless dominance and impulsive antisociality) that may differentially tap these two sets of features. In a mixed-gender sample of undergraduates and prisoners,…

Despite substantial research use, measures of the five-factor model (FFM) are infrequently used in clinical settings due, in part, to issues related to administration time and a reluctance to use self-report instruments. The current study examines the reliability and validity of the Five-Factor Model Score Sheet (FFMSS), which is a 30-item…