A follow-up of the PFS-AV, an assessment instrument for hostility

Abstract

This follow-up study presents psychometric data and norms of the Adapted Version of the Picture-Frustration Study (PFS-AV) from 422 male violent forensic psychiatric in- and outpatients, 101 male violent long-term prisoners, and 319 secondary vocational students (160 males and 159 females). The PFS-AV is a production instrument to measure hostility with 12 items. A diagnostician scored the responses on a seven-point scale, running from not at all hostile (0) to extremely hostile (7). Support was found for the PFS-AV construct, concurrent, and discriminant validity in all three samples. Therefore, the present results underline the generalizability and applicability of the PFS-AV in different populations. Furthermore, for clinical diagnosis, norms are presented for the three samples, just as examples for the scoring on the Likert scale. Also, Dutch, English, and German versions of the PFS-AV with scoring instructions are available.