Avoidant Personality Disorder Severity Index: Dimensional structure and psychometric properties

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2023.112268Get rights and content
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Highlights

  • •
    No measure for severity and changes in Avoidant Personality Disorder (AVPD) exists.
  • •
    We created an interview for avoidance and anxiety in AVPD based on DSM-IV/5 criteria.
  • •
    The interview (AVPDSI) showed good psychometric properties and sensitivity to change.
  • •
    The AVPDSI can be used both for research purposes and in clinical practice.

Abstract

Introduction

The Avoidant Personality Disorder Severity Index (AVPDSI) is developed to provide a standardized clinical interview to measure the severity of and changes in manifestations of avoidant personality disorder (AVPD) in terms of behavior and anxiety, as defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV/5 (DSM-IV/5). This first assessment of the AVPDSI examined its dimensional structure and psychometric properties.

Methods

We investigated factor structure, reliability, interrater reliability, validity, clinical cutoff scores, and sensitivity to change in a mixed sample of patients with a primary diagnosis of AVPD, borderline personality disorder (BPD), social anxiety disorder (SAD), panic disorder (PAD) and in non-patients (NP) (n = 305).

Results

The underlying structure indicated a behavior and anxiety dimension. The instrument showed good internal reliability, inter-rater agreement, and a clinical cutoff point with good sensitivity and specificity. Convergent and discriminant validity were good and preliminary results in a treated subsample (n = 20) indicated sensitivity to change.

Conclusion

In our opinion, a new and valid instrument has been introduced, enabling researchers and clinicians to reliably measure the severity of and changes in manifestations of AVPD.

Keywords

Psychometric properties
Symptom measure
Standardized interview
Avoidant personality disorder

Data availability

Participants of this study did not agree for their data to be shared publicly, so supporting data is unavailable. The AVPDSI (Dutch and English version) is available upon request.

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© 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.