Validation of FFM PD Counts for Screening Personality Pathology and Psychopathy in Adolescence

Abstract

Miller and colleagues (Miller, Bagby, Pilkonis, Reynolds, & Lynam, 2005) recently developed a Five-Factor Model (FFM) personality disorder (PD) count technique for describing and diagnosing PDs and psychopathy in adulthood. This technique conceptualizes PDs relying on general trait models and uses facets from the expert-generated PD prototypes to score the FFM PDs. The present study corroborates on the study of Miller and colleagues (2005) and investigates in Study 1 whether the PD count technique shows discriminant validity to describe PDs in adolescence. Study 2 extends this objective to psychopathy. Results suggest that the FFM PD count technique is equally successful in adolescence as in adulthood to describe PD symptoms, supporting the use of this descriptive method in adolescence. The normative data and accompanying PD count benchmarks enable to use FFM scores for PD screening purposes in adolescence.