Running head: TEXT CRITIQUE: PERSONALITY ASSESSEMENT INVENTORY 1
Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI)
Student 255641
Liberty University Online
TEXT CRITIQUE: PERSONALITY ASSESSEMENT INVENTORY 2
Abstract
This test critique will address the history, purpose, and structure of the Personality Assessment
Inventory (PAI). It will, also, address the validity, reliability, test scores and results, strengths,
and weakness as well as technical evaluation of the PAI. The PAI covers constructs most relevant
to a broad-based assessment of mental disorders is a personality assessment measure. The PAI is
comprised of 344 items and requires 50-60 minutes to administer individually. Each item is rated
on a 4-point true/false scale. The PAI consists of 22 non-overlapping full scales including four
validity scales, 11 clinical scales, five treatment scales, and two interpersonal scales. Facilitating
interpretation and cover the full range of complex clinical constructs, ten full scales contain
conceptually derived subscales. The test-retest correlation coefficients ranged from .66 to .94 on
the clinical scales over a period of time of 2 to 4 weeks.
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Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI)
General Information
Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) was developed by Leslie C. Morey, Ph.D.
through Psychological Assessment Resources (PAR) in 1991. The Personality Assessment
Inventory’s purpose is to comprehensively assess adult psychopathology with an age range of 18
years old to 89 years old. The PAI offers paper and pencil, online administration and scoring via
PARiConnect, software, and professional report service formats to administer the assessment.
The inventory has a time limit of 50 to 60 minutes to complete.
The PAI offers materials to be purchased through comprehensive kits and per item prices.
The Comprehensive kits are available in English for $379 and Spanish for $289, each offers the
PAI Professional Manual, reusable item booklets, hand-scorable answer sheets, profile forms-
adults, and critical items forms. PAI offers individual pricing for manuals, books, and equipment
as well as the different forms and booklets. The costs for the manuals, books, and equipment are
as follows: professional manual ($90), administration folio ($43), audio administration-CD-
ROM ($67), an interpretive guide to the PAI ($109), and casebook ($78). As for the cost of
additional materials of forms and booklets are offered in packages. There are reusable item
booklets: hardcover ($43) or softcover ($51) that can be used with hand-scorable answer sheets,
which are sold in packages of 25 for $67. The PAI offers profile forms for adults ($47) and
college ($43) both sold in packages of 25. Also sold in packages of 25 are structural summary
forms ($49), and critical items forms ($41). Prices for the Spanish version of the softcover
reusable item booklets (pkg. of 10) is $62, and the hand-scorable answer sheets (pkg. of 25) cost
$74. Also available at the PARiConnect website is the online assessment platform. The cost for
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the i-Admins ($6 each), score reports ($7 each), and interpretive reports ($19 each) must be
purchased with a minimum of 5.
The Personality Assessment Inventory was developed following a sequential, construct-
validation strategy (Weiner & Greene, 2017). It was standardized on a sample of college adults
ages 18 years and older to be a self-administered, objective inventory of adult personality to
provide information on critical clinical variables. According to Dr. Morey, there were ten steps in
the development of the Personality Assessment Inventory that include: (1) test users surveyed,
literature reviewed, and current diagnostic schemas used to develop item content; (2) scale
content areas were defined; (3) scale and subscales selected; (4) development of initial 2,200
items; (5) reduced of item pool to 1.086 items based on research team rating; (6) reviewed by
external bias panel and expert judges decreased item pool to 776 items; (7) alpha version (776
items) analyzed; (8) item deleted and revised to produce a 597-item beta version; (9) beta version
tested and analyses conducted; and (10) standardization version (344 items) produced following
further reliability and validity analyses (www.parinc.com). The development was based on a
construct validation framework emphasizing rational as well as a quantitative framework with a
strong emphasis on the development and selection of items for the PAI. The Personality
Assessment Inventory was developed as a personality test to help assess psychological
syndromes while providing information relevant for clinical diagnosis, treatment planning, and
screening for psychopathology.
Test Description
The PAI consists of 22 non-overlapping full scales including four validity scales, 11
clinical scales, five treatment scales, and two interpersonal scales. To facilitate interpretation and
cover the full range of complex clinical constructs, ten full scales contain conceptually derived
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subscales. The 22 non-overlapping scales consist of somatic complaints (SOM), anxiety (ANX),
anxiety-related disorders (ARD), depression (DEP), mania (MAN), paranoia (PAR),
schizophrenia (SCZ), borderline features (BOR), antisocial features (ANT), alcohol problems
(ALC), drug problems (DRG), aggression (AGG), suicidal ideation (SUI), stress (STR),
nonsupport (NON), treatment rejection (RXR), dominance (DOM), warmth (WRM),
inconsistency, infrequency, negative impression, and positive impression. The PAI has four
validity scales for the evaluation of response styles: Inconsistency (ICN), Infrequency (INF),
Negative Impression (MIN), and Positive Impression (PIM). Of the 4 validity scales, two are
dedicated to response stability the ICN and INF. The ICN shows 10 pairs of highly correlated
items while INF has 8 rarely endorsed items that are unrelated to psychopathology (Rogers,
Ornduff, & Sewell, 1993). The PIM is a 9-item measure of defensiveness while the NIM is a
scale constructed for the appraisal of malingering and contains 9 items with highly abnormal
psychotic, dysphoric, and organic content (Rogers, Ornduff, & Sewell, 1993). The 11 clinical
scales of the PAI consists of the first 11 nonoverlapping scales: SOM, ANX, ARD, DEP, MAN,
PAR, SCZ, BOR, ANT, ALC, and DRG. These scales concentrate primarily on syndromes and
diagnostic substance encompassing a wide-ranging selection of psychological disorders
according to Rogers et al. (2018). The PAI uses the scales of AGG, SUI, STR, NON, and RXR
regarding treatment considerations. The last 2 of the 22 overlapping scales are used to evaluate
interpersonal scales: DOM and WRM. The PAI does include 9 clinical scales and 1 treatment
consideration with their respective subscales:
Somatic Complaints: SOM-C, SOM-S, and SOM-H
Anxiety: ANX-C, ANX-A, and ANX-P
Anxiety-Related Disorders: ARD-O, ARD-P, and ARD-T
Depression: DEP-C, DEP-A, and DEP-P
Mania: MAN-A, MAN-G, and MAN-I
Paranoia: PAR-H, PAR-R, and PAR-R
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Schizophrenia: SCZ-P, SCZ-S, SCZ-T
Borderline Features: BOR-A, BOR-I, BOR-N, and BOR-S
Antisocial Features: ANT-A, ANT-E, and ANT-S
Aggression: AGG-A, AGG-V, and AGG-P
Also, within the PAI are 27 critical items that are identified as markers of potential crisis
conditions and have very low validation in normal sample and these essential items suggest
further investigation (Morey, n.d.).
The Personality Assessment Inventory can be given in both a full form that contains 344-
items and the short form contains 160 items, which are the first half of the full form. The PAI
employ a 4-point Likert scale of false, slightly true, mainly true, and very true. These 160 items
are considered the strongest item-scale correlations during the PAI development (Ward et al.,
2018). Although the short form shows adequate internal consistency reliability, it has drawbacks
due to the nine shortened scales contains only four items each. The condensed scales may reduce
the accuracy of the scales due to a comparison of items from the total item pool (Ward et al.,
2018).
Administering the Personality Assessment Inventory requires a qualification level of C
that means to administer the individual must have a degree from an accredited 4-year college or
university in psychology, counseling, or a closely related field plus satisfactory completion of
coursework in test interpretation, psychometrics and measurement theory, educational statistics,
or a closely related area; or license or certification from an agency that requires appropriate
training and experience in the ethical and competent use of psychological tests plus an advanced
professional degree that provides appropriate training in the administration and interpretation of
psychological tests, or license or certification from an agency that requires appropriate training
and experience in the ethical and competent use of psychological tests (www.parinc.com). The
self-reporting personality test may be administered by paper and pencil, online 24/7 via
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PARiConnect, or with available audio administration CD. Like the ways to administer the PAI, it
can also be scored in the like through hand scoring in 15-20 minutes, online scoring through the
PARiConnect, and an interpretive software provides comprehensive, individualized reports.
Technical Evaluation
In the original alpha-version of the PAI a group of college students was
recruited and placed in one of three conditions: (1) standard, students were
asked to respond honest and frank; (2) positive-impression management,
students, were asked to respond as if they were trying to impress a future
employer; and (3) malingering, students were asked to respond as if they a
person with a mental disorder (Weiner & Greene, 2017). From this data, Dr.
Morey and her team were able to narrow down the items to 597 in which
they used for the beta-version of the PAI (Weiner & Greene, 2017). Then the
beta-version was administered to three groups of individuals: community
adults; clinical patients; and college students with either positive impression
or malingering instructions. Following the results from the beta-version, the
final number of items for the PAI became 344 which represented the best
balance of all these item characteristics so that no item could be scored on
more than one scale to ensure no overlapping items on the PAI.
The normative data were collected from three groups 1,462
community-dwelling adults although a subsample of 1,000 was selected from
the U.S. census-matched; 1,265 clinical patients from 69 clinical sites; and
1,051 college students (Weiner & Greene, 2017). The norms were based on
the 1,000 individuals from the U.S. census-matched sample. Reliability and
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validity are based on the data collected from the normative three sample
groups. The PAI has a strong psychometric properties and is normed at a
fourth-grade reading level. And provides normative comparisons with clinical
and community populations.
Reliability studies indicate a high degree of internal consistency across samples and
results being stable over a 2 to 4 week period of time. The evidence of reliability is shown by the
test-retest reliability coefficients ranged from .66 to .94 on the 22 scales over the 2 to 4 week
time period. The INF scale helps to establish if the test-retest is responding arbitrarily or
irresponsibly while the ICN scale determines if the test-retest is returning steadily and as it
should be attending to item content (Matlasz et al., 2017). The reliability coefficients ranging
from .66 to .94 can be seen as moderately acceptable to highly acceptable in its reliability. The
PAI manual registered the reliability data from the original 75 community-dwelling adults who
were retested after an average of 4 weeks and 80 college students who were retested after the 4
weeks. The data showed a standard error of measurement assortments from 2.8 to 4.6 T points
for the 11 clinical scales of the PAI (Weiner & Greene, 2017). And stated the individual’s actual
score on the clinical scales would be within ±3 to 5 T points two-thirds of the time (Weiner &
Greene, 2017).
Validity studies demonstrate convergent and discriminant validity with more than 50
other measures of psychopathology. Morey suggested that cognitive disruption may be one
crucial component accounting for the increases on the PAI validity scales (Sinclair et al., 2015).
Evaluating the validity properties of the PAI full form and the PAI short form yields correlations
between the 20 scorable full scales. Based on any one of the validity scales that exceeds the
standard cutoffs (ICN >73, infrequency [INF] > 75, negative impression [NIM] > 92, and
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positive impression [PIM] > 68, the PAI short form does exceed the standard cutoffs with 97.5%
whereas the full form does not (Ward et al., 2018). The PAI short form did not produce
considerably more silhouettes with validity scale scores that surpassed standard cutoffs than the
PAI full form with χ2(199) = 4.48, p>0.05 (Ward et al., 2018).
Practical Evaluation
The quality of writing in the test materials for the Personality Assessment Inventory is
outstanding and with a reading level of 4th grade, it is entirely appropriate for those taking the
assessment to understand. The quality of graphic design and presentation of the test material are
of good quality, too. The Personality Assessment Inventory offers reusable booklets to administer
the assessment multiple times. The ability to use reusable test booklet means that the test
material is durable. The PAI is very easy to administer, score and interpret. All the PAI requires
to administer the assessment is the test manual, test booklet, answer and profile sheets plus the
scoring template. The instructions are comprehensive and precise. The test can be completed in
50 to 60 minutes. They can be either hand scored or computerized within 15 to 20 minutes,
which allows for the results to be given to the test taker promptly. Interpreting the scores are
quick due to the simple translation of scores to T scores. The scale names are easy to understand
along with a detailed description of each scale. Also available is the use of interpretive software
along with an online assessment.
Summary Evaluation and Critique
The four-point scale of the Personality Assessment Inventory helps give the test strength
because it does not force the respondent into choosing an answer that does not reflect them
completely. The test strength is visible through the ease of the administration and use along with
being easy to score, cost-effective, easily interpretable and psychometrically sound measure of
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several areas of clinical concern (Watson & Liljequist, 2018). With these strengths, the PAI has
become used in a range of setting from clinical practices to a screening tool for a variety of
workplaces (Watson & Liljequist, 2018). Like with any measure, the PAI has its weakness
regarding the constructs the PAI measures. Limitations with the PAI can be due to sample size
used for analyses along with the research of standardized screening tools (Matlasz et al., 2016).
Also, the test weakness is dues to the fact that the PAI is a self-reporting questionnaire, which
relies on the individual’s memory and honesty.
The recommendations for uses of the PAI test include assessing offenders with serious
mental illness, suicidal ideation with federal inmates, and personality disorders in sexually
violent predators (Boccaccini, Harris, Schrantz, & Varela, 2017; Matlasz et al., 2016; Patry &
Magaletta, 2015). Revisions for the PAI should include using individuals with real psychiatric
patients and others with disabilities rather than asking university students to pretend or “faking”
when taking the PAI as the norm group. Further study should be focused on the reliability data
from a variety of clinical represented populations. Also, further study and revisions of the PAI
should look at the development of new scales as the PAI becomes a more useful assessment tool
(Watson & Liljequist, 2018).
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References
Boccaccini, M. T., Harris, P. B., Schrantz, K., and Varela, J. G., (2017). Personality Assessment
Inventory scores as predictors of evaluation referrals, evaluator opinions, and
commitment decisions in sexually violent predator cases. Journal of Personality
Assessment, 99(5), 472-480.
Matlasz, T. M., Brylski, J. L., Leidenfrost, C. M., Scalco, M., Sinclair, S. J., Schoelerman, R. M.,
Tsang, V., and Antonius, D. (2017). Cognitive status and profile validity on the
Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) in offenders with serious mental illness.
International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 50, 38-44.
Morey, L. C. (n.d.). Personality assessment inventory. Retrieved from
https://www.parinc.com/WebUploads/samplerpts/pai2.ppt
Patry, M. W. and Magaletta, P. R., (2015). Measuring suicidality using the Personality
Assessment Inventory: A convergent validity study with federal inmates. Assessment,
22(1), 36-45.
Personality Assessment Inventory. (n.d.) Retrieved on December 4, 2018 from
https://www.parinc.com/Products/Pkey/287.
Rogers, R., Williams, M. M., Winningham, D. B., and Sharf, A. J. (2018). An examination of PAI
clinical descriptors and correlates in an outpatient sample: Tailoring of interpretive
statements. Journal of Psychopathology Behavioral Assessment, 40, 259-275.
Rogers, R., Ornduff, S. R., and Sewell, K. W. (1993). Feigning specific disorders: A study of the
Personality Assessment Inventory. Journal of Personality Assessment, 60(3), 554-560.
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Ward, T., Arnold, K., Cunningham, M. C., and Liljequist, L. (2018). Three validation studies of
the Personality Assessment Inventory short form. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 74,
2264-2275.
Watson, J. and Liljequist, L. (2018). Using the Personality Assessment Inventory to identify
ADHD-like symptoms. Journal of Attention Disorders, 22(11), 1049-1055.
Weiner, I. B. & Greene, R. L. (2017). Handbook of Personality Assessment. Hoboken, New
Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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