Rational-empirical strategy with IRT to derive personality disorder scales from the personality assessment inventory / by Leah Burgess.

Abstract

"The Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) is a broadband measure of adult psychopathology that assesses two of ten personality disorders (PDs). A rational-empirical strategy using expert raters and Item Response Theory based analyses (Samejima's Graded Response Model) was employed in an attempt to construct an additional eight PD scales from the existing PAI item pool. Raters demonstrated strong agreement in identifying PAI items that capture all 10 PDs. The IRT analyses supported that the PAI items can be reconfigured to assess the 10 PDs, and convergence with nonparametric scalability coefficients and internal consistency reliability estimates was demonstrated. Also, preliminary discriminant and convergent validity evidence per correlations with Millon's (1997) PD scales was generally consistent with extant PD research. Overall, the results demonstrated several advantages of applying IRT methods to psychopathology research."--abstract.