Personality Inventory for Children: a measure of biopsychosocial status in children and adolescents

Abstract

Background and Objectives: The purpose of this study was to investigate the discriminant and convergent validity of the Personality Inventory for Children revised version (PIC-R) with respect to DSM-IV Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD; n = 21), Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD; n = 22) and non-patient controls (NC; n = 42). Methods: The study was a cross-sectional comparative study conducted in Trondheim, Norway, with children between 9-13 years old, referred to an university outpatient clinic. Results : One way ANOVA with bonferroni post hoc test showed significant differences between ODD and GAD groups on 8 PIC-R scales, between the GAD and NC groups on 9 PIC-R scales and between ODD and NC groups on all PIC-R scales excluding the intel- lectual screening scale. Multigroup discriminant analysis (MDA) was performed to dis- criminate between the groups on a data driven basis. It identified two discriminant func- tions as important in differentiating between the three groups. These functions were able to correctly identify 92.2 % of the cases. Conclusions: The results indicate that specific PIC-R profiles have high discriminant and convergent validity for distinguishing GAD, ODD and NC groups. The PIC-R seems to be a useful screening tool in paediatric and neuropsychological settings.