Abstract
Borderline personality organization (BPO) is a key personality component of some but not all partner-violent men. The study described in this paper examines the psychometric properties of the borderline personality organization scale (BPO Scale; Oldham et al., 1985) in a Spanish sample of 643 men undergoing court-mandated psychological treatment after conviction for episodes of intimate-partner violence. Three confirmatory factor analyses were carried out first, and the three-factor structure of the BPO scale was then tested. Results for concurrent validity show positive and significant correlations between the subscales and the overall BPO scale, and with other instruments that measure borderline and antisocial personality disorders (ASPDs), and impulsivity. The BPO scale also presents evidence of known-groups validity, since BPO scores decrease with age, and of discriminant validity, as the scale discriminates between participants who do and do not exceed the cutoff point on a borderline personality scale. The BPO Scale is a suitable instrument for evaluating BPO in partner-violent men.
Highlights
Intimate partner violence (IPV) has become a matter of acute social concern and it is seen as one of the principal public health issues worldwide, due to the scale of the problem and to the seriousness of its personal, family, social, and legal consequences (DeBoard-Lucas and Grych, 2011; Okuda et al, 2011; Stylianou, 2018)
The first was that the Borderline personality organization (BPO) scale will maintain the same factorial structure as the original study for this sample, consisting of three correlated factors
Three factorial analyses were carried out to test this initial hypothesis: We carried out three confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using the maximum likelihood estimation method
Summary
Intimate partner violence (IPV) has become a matter of acute social concern and it is seen as one of the principal public health issues worldwide, due to the scale of the problem and to the seriousness of its personal, family, social, and legal consequences (DeBoard-Lucas and Grych, 2011; Okuda et al, 2011; Stylianou, 2018). Countless studies have been undertaken in an effort to identify the individual factors distinguishing aggressors, which might help both in predicting aggressive behaviors of this kind, and provide targets of intervention for treatment programs (Graña et al, 2014, 2017; Jose et al, 2014; Carbajosa et al, 2017; Loinaz et al, 2018) Among these factors, personality disorders have gained prominence in recent years, as they increase both the risk of an individual’s committing violent acts (Logan and Blackburn, 2009) and of recidivism (Hiscoke et al, 2003). According to the diagnostic criteria established in DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association, 2014), BPD is theoretically defined by the presence of the following symptoms, among others: (a) alteration of an individual’s personality structure, including disturbance of the sense of identity, intense distortions of self-image, and chronic feelings of emptiness; (b) alteration of affective states, including intense and inappropriate emotional outbursts and anger management issues, as well as general affective instability; (c) behavioral alterations, including suicide attempts and self-harm, as well as extreme impulsivity leading to potentially unsafe behaviors; and (d) alteration of interpersonal relations, including a pattern of unstable yet very intense relationships, constant striving to avoid abandonment, and transitory paranoid ideation
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