Face validity of the DSM-III-R personality disorders

A list of the 142 diagnostic criteria for the DSM-III-R personality disorders was sent to a national sample of psychiatrists and clinical psychologists. The criteria were presented in randomly scrambled order, and clinicians were asked to assign the criteria to their parent categories. The average clinician assigned 66% of the criteria to the actual parent categories. These results suggest that the face validity of many of the DSM-III-R personality disorder criteria is low. Moreover, it appears that there are high levels of overlap in meaning among the criteria for the histrionic/narcissistic, avoidant/dependent, and schizotypal/paranoid pairs of personality disorders.