Are We Thinking about the Same Disorder? A Trifactor Model Approach to Understand Parents' and Their Adolescents' Reports of Borderline Personality Pathology

Attachment Problems and Mentalizing Capacity Relate to Parent-Child Informant Discrepancies in Female Adolescents with Borderline Personality Disorder

Parent-child informant discrepancies on psychopathology provide important knowledge on the parent-child relationship and the child's mental health, but mechanisms underlying parent-child informant discrepancies are largely unknown. Therefore, we investigated the relationship between attachment problems and mentalizing capacity and parent-child informant discrepancies on borderline personality disorder (BPD) severity, internalizing, and externalizing pathology in a clinical sample of 91 adolescent girls with BPD and their parents. Results showed that more attachment problems to parents and peers were related to adolescents reporting more severe BPD than parents. Adolescents who described more internalizing symptoms relative to parents, reported more parental attachment problems, but enhanced peer attachment, suggesting those adolescents who do not feel recognized by their parents might turn to their friends. When parents rated adolescents higher on externalizing behaviors, the adolescent reported more attachment problems to parents and lower mentalizing capacity, indicating that this sub-group of adolescents may reflect less about how their behavior affects others.

Conceptual, methodological, and measurement factors that disqualify use of measurement invariance techniques to detect informant discrepancies in youth mental health assessments

On page 1 of his classic text, Millsap (2011) states, "Measurement invariance is built on the notion that a measuring device should function the same way across varied conditions, so long as those varied conditions are irrelevant [emphasis added] to the attribute being measured." By construction, measurement invariance techniques require not only detecting varied conditions but also ruling out that these conditions inform our understanding of measured domains (i.e., conditions that do not contain domain-relevant information). In fact, measurement invariance techniques possess great utility when theory and research inform their application to specific, varied conditions (e.g., cultural, ethnic, or racial background of test respondents) that, if not detected, introduce measurement biases, and, thus, depress measurement validity (e.g., academic achievement and intelligence). Yet, we see emerging bodies of work where scholars have "put the cart before the horse" when it comes to measurement invariance, and they apply these techniques to varied conditions that, in fact, may reflect domain-relevant information. These bodies of work highlight a larger problem in measurement that likely cuts across many areas of scholarship. In one such area, youth mental health, researchers commonly encounter a set of conditions that nullify the use of measurement invariance, namely discrepancies between survey reports completed by multiple informants, such as parents, teachers, and youth themselves (i.e., informant discrepancies). In this paper, we provide an overview of conceptual, methodological, and measurement factors that should prevent researchers from applying measurement invariance techniques to detect informant discrepancies. Along the way, we cite evidence from the last 15 years indicating that informant discrepancies reflect domain-relevant information. We also apply this evidence to recent uses of measurement invariance techniques in youth mental health. Based on prior evidence, we highlight the implications of applying these techniques to multi-informant data, when the informant discrepancies observed within these data might reflect domain-relevant information. We close by calling for a moratorium on applying measurement invariance techniques to detect informant discrepancies in youth mental health assessments. In doing so, we describe how the state of the science would need to fundamentally "flip" to justify applying these techniques to detect informant discrepancies in this area of work.

A borderline personality assessment for adolescents: Validity and reliability of the Chinese languages borderline personality features scale (short form version) for adolescents/children

BACKGROUND

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is characterized by behavioral patterns that promote suffering in many adolescents and their guardians. Currently, early diagnosis of BPD mainly depends on the effective assessment of pathological personality traits (i.e., borderline personality features) and using the indicated scales. The Borderline Personality Features Scale for Children-Short Form (BPFSC-SF) is widely used and the introduction of a Chinese version of the BPFSC-SF, can improve the diagnosis and prognosis of Chinese patients with BPD.

OBJECTIVE

The aim of the present study was to assess the validity and reliability of the Chinese version of the BPFSC-SF.

METHOD

120 adolescents with BPD were enrolled in the present study and completed the BPFSC-SF and the Personality Belief Questionnaire-Short Form (PBQ-SF) assessments. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to test assessment validity. Test-retest correlations and the Cronbach's α coefficients were used to determine reliability.

RESULTS

CFA analysis identified primary factors of BPFSC, with each item ranging from 0.597~0.899. The Spearman rank correlation coefficient was 0.877 between CL-BFSFC-SF and the state vs. trait loneliness scale. The Cronbach's α of the scale was 0.854 in the clinical group. The test-retest reliability correlation coefficient (interclass correlation coefficients.ICC) was 0.937.

CONCLUSION

The Chinese version of BPFSC-SF is a valid and reliable tool for adolescent Chinese patients with BPD.