Temporal reliability of psychological assessments for patients in a special hospital with severe personality disorder: a preliminary note.
BACKGROUND
The new programme for assessing those with dangerous and severe personality disorder relies heavily on psychological assessments of personality disorder and risk.


METHODS
The temporal reliability of assessments of psychopathy (PCL-R), risk (HCR-20) and personality was assessed using the International Personality Disorder Examination (IPDE) in 15 randomly selected male prisoners in a high secure hospital carried out at intervals varying between a mean of nine and 19 months after initial assessments by a variety of assessors.


RESULTS
Using the intra-class correlation coefficient the agreement varied between 0.57 (HCR-20), 0.58 (PCL-R) and 0.38-0.70 for IPDE personality disorders, with the best agreement for antisocial personality disorder (0.70).


CONCLUSIONS
These levels of agreement are consistent with other recent work on temporal reliability of personality instruments but are a little too low for confidence in these measures alone in the assessment process.
Department of Psychological Medicine, Imperial College, London, UK. p.tyrer@imperial.ac.uk
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P
Tyrer
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Cooper
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Seivewright
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Duggan
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Rao
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Hogue
D000328:Adult; D000987:Antisocial Personality Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis*; D003617:Dangerous Behavior; D006778:Hospitals, Psychiatric; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010556:Personality Tests / Q000592:standards*; D011329:Prisoners / Q000523:psychology*; D011599:Psychopathology / Q000379:methods*; D013997:Time Factors; D006113:United Kingdom