Examination of the reliability and validity of the Personality Assessment Inventory

The reliability, discriminant validity, and construct validity of the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI)-a multidimensional self-report measure of abnormal personality traits-were examined within the Australian context. Subjects included 151 normal individuals, 30 alcoholics, and 30 schizophrenic patients. A subsample of 70 non-psychiatric adults responded to the PAI items twice over a test-retest interval of 28 days. The resulting median retest coefficient was 0. 7, indicating less than optimal stability. The median alpha (KR21 coefficient was 0.8, suggesting rather narrow measurement scales. A significant multivariate main effect was obtained across groups after the effects of age and gender were removed. Multiple comparisons for each of the PAI scales revealed significant differences between the respective groups, as discussed. A higher-order scale factoring did not strongly support the purported PAI structure. In reanalyses of the correlation matrices included in the Professional Manual, the purported PAI factor structure was unable to be replicated for the standardization clinical sample (N