The Biographical Personality Interview (BPI)--a new approach to the assessment of premorbid personality in psychiatric research. Part II: Psychometric properties.
The Biographical Personality Interview (BPI) was applied to 179 subjects (158 psychiatric patients and 21 probands from the general population); 100 patients and 20 healthy controls served as a validation sample; the others had been interviewed during the training period or did not meet the inclusion criteria for the validation of the BPI. The acceptance of the interview was high, the inter-rater reliability of the ratings of premorbid personality structures ("types") varied between 0.81 and 0.88 per type. Concurrent validity of the typological constructs as assessed by means of the BPI was inferred from the intercorrelations of type scores and correlations of these scores with questionnaire data and proved to be adequate. Clinical validity of the assessment was indicated by statistically significant differences between diagnostic groups. Problems and further developments of the instrument and its application are discussed.
Max Planck, Institute of Psychiatry, Clinical Institute, Munich, Germany.
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von Zerssen
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Barthelmes
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Pössl
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Black
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Garzynski
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Wessel
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Hecht
D000328:Adult; D015982:Bias; D001680:Biographies as Topic; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic / Q000379:methods; D008297:Male; D008487:Medical History Taking / Q000379:methods*; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D008875:Middle Aged; D010551:Personality / Q000145:classification*; D010552:Personality Assessment; D010554:Personality Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis; D010555:Personality Inventory; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric