title: Assessment of borderline personality features in population samples: is the Personality Assessment Inventory-Borderline Features scale measurement invariant across sex and age?
abstract: Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is more often diagnosed in women than in men, and symptoms tend to decline with age. Using a large community sample, the authors investigated whether sex and age differences in four main features of BPD, measured with the Personality Assessment Inventory-Borderline Features scale (PAI-BOR; Morey, 1991), are a result of measurement bias or if they represent true differences. The PAI-BOR was completed by four Sex x Age groups (N = 6,838). Multigroup confirmatory factor analysis showed that the PAI-BOR is measurement invariant across sex and age. Compared with men, women reported more borderline characteristics for affective instability, identity problems, and negative relationships but not for self-harm. Younger men had higher scores for identity problems and self-harm than did older men. Younger women had higher scores for identity problems and affective instability than did older women. Results suggest that the PAI-BOR can be used to study the etiology of BPD features in population-based samples and to screen for BPD features in clinical settings in both men and women of varying ages. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved).
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Psychology, VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Marleen H M
authors.initials: MH
authors.lastname: De Moor
authors.forename: Marijn A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Distel
authors.forename: Timothy J
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: Trull
authors.forename: Dorret I
authors.initials: DI
authors.lastname: Boomsma
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D017677:Age Distribution; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001883:Borderline Personality Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009426:Netherlands / Q000453:epidemiology; D010552:Personality Assessment / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D017678:Sex Distribution; D055815:Young Adult