Psychometric Evaluation of the Borderline Personality Disorder Checklist

Area of Science:

• Psychiatry
• Clinical Psychology
• Psychometrics

Background:

• Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a severe mental health condition.
• The Borderline Personality Disorder Checklist (BPDCL) assesses patient-reported BPD symptom burden.
• Validated translations of the BPDCL are needed across various languages.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the psychometric properties of the BPDCL.
• To assess the reliability and validity of BPDCL versions in Italian, Dutch, German, Spanish, English, and Greek.

Main Methods:

• Utilized secondary data from five studies (N=3199) across seven countries.
• Administered the BPDCL to BPD patients (N=1131), other personality disorder patients (N=225), Axis I disorder patients (N=57), and healthy controls (N=1786).
• Conducted item analyses, known-groups validity, and convergent validity assessments.

Main Results:

• All language versions of the BPDCL demonstrated high reliability (Cronbach's Alpha: 0.93-0.96).
• BPDCL showed significant correlations (≥0.55) with related measures (BPDSI, SCL-90, BSI).
• The BPDCL effectively differentiated between diagnostic groups, with BPD patients reporting the highest burden.

Conclusions:

• The BPDCL exhibits good psychometric properties across multiple languages.
• The checklist is a suitable self-report measure for assessing the subjective burden in BPD.
• The BPDCL's cross-linguistic validity supports its use in international clinical settings.