Clinical validity of a Personality Inventory for Children (PIC) profile typology

We evaluated the validity of a profile typology for the Personality Inventory for Children (PIC), a parent-informant measure of child psychiatric status. For referred children, we studied (a) the convergence of PIC profile types with diagnoses according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3rd ed., American Psychiatric Association, 1980) and (b) the incremental validity of the PIC over diagnoses in the prediction of symptom ratings completed by teachers and clinicians. We found a high diagnosis-PIC correspondence only for developmentally disordered children; the overlap for children with emotional-conduct problems was poor. For the latter group, however, the correlation of diagnoses with symptom ratings was low, but the incremental validity of the PIC over diagnoses was high. We discuss the use of this profile typology in the clinical evaluation of children and present a case example.