Functioning Assessment Short Test (FAST): validity and reliability in adolescent and young adults with Borderline...

Area of Science:

• Psychiatry
• Psychology
• Clinical Assessment

Background:

• Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) severely impacts functioning across social and occupational domains.
• Existing assessment tools for BPD functioning are limited and lack BPD-specific validation.
• Current instruments often overlook specific functional areas like cognition and interpersonal relationships.

Purpose of the Study:

• To validate the Functioning Assessment Short Test (FAST) for assessing psychosocial functioning.
• To evaluate the FAST's utility in Spanish adolescents and young adults diagnosed with BPD.

Main Methods:

• Observational study involving 216 BPD patients and 107 healthy controls (HC).
• Psychometric evaluation of the FAST, including internal consistency, inter-rater reliability, factor analysis, and discriminant validity (ROC analysis).
• Assessment of FAST's sensitivity to change in a subgroup of BPD patients.

Main Results:

• The FAST demonstrated high internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.869) and excellent inter-rater reliability (ICC=0.997).
• The FAST showed high discriminant capacity between BPD patients and HC (AUC=0.947), with optimal cutoff yielding 88% sensitivity and 90.7% specificity.
• Significant effect sizes (ES=-0.98) indicated the FAST's responsiveness to clinical improvements in functioning.

Conclusions:

• The FAST is a psychometrically sound and reliable instrument for evaluating psychosocial functioning.
• The FAST is suitable for use in adolescents and young adults with BPD.
• This validation supports the use of FAST in clinical and research settings for BPD.