https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7085-3349
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ABSTRACT
Objectives
Measurements are often developed for the assessment of personality disorders (PDs) in younger adults and seldom evaluated on the applicability in older adults. Remarkably, research has not yet been conducted into age-group appropriateness of the gold standard for the assessment of PDs, known as Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Personality Disorders (SCID-II). Therefore, the current study empirically investigated the age-neutrality of the PDs assessed by the SCID-II.
Methods
Age-neutrality was examined in 84 younger adults (aged 20–45 years) and 68 older adults (aged 65–85) by Differential Item Functioning (DIF). The impact of DIF on scale level was further examined using Differential Test Functioning analyzes to examine the impact of the amount of DIF variance in the items on scale level.
Results
Overall, the great majority, 95.8% of the categorically measured items and 87.5% of the dimensionally measured items, was endorsed in the same way by younger adults and older adults with equal scores on the PD scale. Subsequent analyzes revealed no large DTF for PD scales.
Conclusions
Overall the SCID-II in an outpatient population is age-neutral for both categorically and dimensionally scored PD scales.
Clinical Implications
The SCID-II can be used for the assessment of PDs in older adults.
Disclosure statement
No financial interest or benefit has arisen from the direct applications of this research for any of the authors.
Data availibility statment
Data availibility is possible. Please contact the first author of this paper for more information.
Notes
1. The exact cutoff values can be obtained from the first author on request.