Factor analysis of the Personality Assessment Inventory in service members with traumatic brain injury

ABSTRACT

Primary Objective

To identify the factor structure of the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) clinical scales for military service members with traumatic brain injury (TBI).

Research Design

Retrospective analysis of existing data base.

Methods and Procedures

The sample included 210 service members with TBI who completed the PAI as part of a neuropsychological evaluation at a military TBI clinic. Statistical analysis included exploratory factor analysis of 214 items of the 11 PAI clinical scales.

Main Outcomes and Results

Exploratory factor analysis indicated a four-factor solution accounting for 30.4% of the variance in scores. A review of the face validity of the items from each factor generated the following factor labels: Somatic/Psychiatric/Cognitive Distress, Social Distress, Substance Misuse, and Depression.

Conclusions

The PAI appears to assess general distress (i.e., somatic/psychiatric/cognitive) and substance misuse constructs for both psychiatric and TBI populations, but it also appears to assess a “social distress” construct (i.e., difficulties socializing in both military and civilian populations) that is unique to military populations. Suggestions are offered to re-conceptualize PAI clinical scales specific to psychopathology (i.e., schizophrenia, paranoia, mania, borderline, antisocial) and personality disorders (i.e., borderline, antisocial) in terms of neurologic and military specific issues for service members with TBI.

KEYWORDS:

• Personality Assessment Inventory
• traumatic brain injury
• exploratory factor analysis

Disclaimer

The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy of Fort Belvoir Community Hospital, the Defense Health Agency, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government. Any discussion or mention of commercial products or brand names does not imply or support any endorsement by the Federal Government.

Data availability statement

We did not utilize data from any existing data set.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics approval statement

This article was approved by the appropriate research oversight programs at Fort Belvoir Army Base and Walter Reed National Military Medical Hospital.

Patient consent statement

Patient consent was not required as it was a retrospective study and no patient identifiers were used.

Permission to reproduce material from other sources

There were no materials used from other sources in this article.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.