Validation of the German version of the "assessment of DSM-IV personality disorders (ADP-IV)" questionnaire

Objectives: The,,Assessment of DSM-IV Personality Disorders (ADP-IV)" is a 94-item questionnaire that allows for a categorical and dimensional assessment of the DSM-IV personality disorders. Methods: Psychometric properties of the German ADP-IV were investigated in 400 psychotherapy outpatients and a community sample of 385 persons. The SCID-II interview and a standardised expert consensus rating were employed for the assessment of concurrent validity. Results: The ADP-IV showed satisfactory reliability. The median Cronbachs a for the subscales was 0.76 (range 0.65 - 0.87) and the median retest reliability 0.79 (range 0.37 - 0.88). Factor analysis revealed an 11 -factor solution that explained 49.4 % of the variance. The median correlation of the dimensional ADP-IV subscale scores with the SCID-11 and the expert consensus ratings were 0.51 (range: 0.34 - 0.72) and 0.44 (range: 0.27 - 0.62), respectively. The kappas for the chance-corrected agreement of categorical ADP-IV diagnoses with the SCID-11 diagnoses and the expert ratings were 0.35 and 0.29 for any personality disorder and a median of 0.37 and 0.30 for the specific personality disorders. Conclusions: The ADP-IV shows satisfactory reliability and a validity that is comparable and in part even superior to other self-rating instruments. The advantages of the instrument are its brevity, the inclusion of distress ratings, and the dimensional scoring that allows for the construction of detailed profiles of personality pathology. Moreover, it is conveniently available as a free internet download.