Severity Indices of Personality Problems (SIPP-118): Development, Factor Structure, Reliability, and Validity

• Published in: Psychological assessment 2008-03, Vol.20 (1), p.23-34
• Main Authors: Verheul, Roel, Andrea, Helene, Berghout, Caspar C, Dolan, Conor, Busschbach, Jan J. V, van der Kroft, Petra J. A, Bateman, Anthony W, Fonagy, Peter
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Adult and adolescent clinical studies; Age Distribution; Aged; Biological and medical sciences; College Students; Discriminant Analysis; Factor Analysis, Statistical; Factor Structure; Female; Follow-Up Studies; Human; Humans; Intervals; Interview, Psychological - methods; Male; Measurement; Measures (Individuals); Medical sciences; Mental health; Middle Aged; Netherlands; Organizations (Groups); Pathology; Personality; Personality Assessment - standards; Personality Assessment - statistics & numerical data; Personality Change; Personality Disorders; Personality Disorders - diagnosis; Personality Disorders - psychology; Personality Measures; Personality Problems; Psychological tests; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychometrics; Psychometrics. Diagnostic aid systems; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Questionnaires; Reliability; Reproducibility of Results; Self Control; Self Disclosure; Severity (Disorders); Severity (of Disability); Severity of Illness Index; Students - psychology; Surveys and Questionnaires - standards; Techniques and methods; Validation studies; Validity
• ISSN: 1040-3590; 1939-134X
• DOI: 10.1037/1040-3590.20.1.23

This article describes a series of studies involving 2,730 participants on the development and validity testing of the Severity Indices of Personality Problems (SIPP), a self-report questionnaire covering important core components of (mal)adaptive personality functioning. Results show that the 16 facets constituted homogeneous item clusters (i.e., unidimensional and internally consistent parcels) that fit well into 5 clinically interpretable, higher order domains: self-control, identity integration, relational capacities, social concordance, and responsibility. These domains appeared to have good concurrent validity across various populations, good convergent validity in terms of associations with interview ratings of the severity of personality pathology, and good discriminant validity in terms of associations with trait-based personality disorder dimensions. Furthermore, results suggest that the domain scores are stable over a time interval of 14-21 days in a student sample but are sensitive to change over a 2-year follow-up interval in a treated patient population. Taken together, the final instrument, the SIPP-118, provides a set of 5 reliable, valid, and efficient indices of the core components of (mal)adaptive personality functioning.