A meta-analysis of the five-factor internal structure of the Personality Inventory for DSM-5

Abstract

The Alternative Model for Personality Disorders (AMPD) in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition, Section III, presents a new approach to conceptualizing personality psychopathology and diagnosing personality disorders. The Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5) was designed to measure Criterion B of the AMPD and is composed of 25 lower-order facet trait scales that form 5 higher-order domain trait scales. Although the PID-5 has mostly adequate to strong psychometric qualities, the lower-order factor structure of PID-5 facet scales has shown considerable variability across studies, and several PID-5 facets scales show evidence of interstitiality-the cross-loading of facets onto more than 1 domain. This interstitiality is neither unexpected nor especially problematic because complex models of personality have traits that are by nature interstitial. What is problematic, however, is that the factor loadings of these interstitial facets vary across samples, suggesting that some PID-5 facet scales are likely susceptible to sampling error and sampling variability. Moreover, the magnitude of some cross-loadings in some studies is substantive (i.e., ≥ .30). The objective of the current study was to conduct a meta-analysis of the internal structure of the PID-5 to offset potential variability associated with sampling error and gain a clearer picture of the lower-order structure of PID-5 facet scales. This was accomplished using weighted mean factor loadings of the PID-5 facet scales across 14 independent samples (N = 14,743). Results supported that the level of interstitiality decreased when multiple samples were combined, and a clearer picture of the internal structure of the PID-5 facet scales emerged. (PsycINFO Database Record