Dimensions of personality: clinicians' perspectives

Objective: To obtain the opinions and preferences of practising clinicians about the clinical utility of personality scales included within 8 alternative dimensional models of personality disorder for inclusion within an official diagnostic nomenclature. Method: Psychiatrists (n = 226) and psychologists (n = 164) from 2 continents provided clinical utility ratings on personality scales organized from 8 alternative dimensional models of personality disorder. Results: The psychiatrists and the psychologists supported the inclusion of most of the scales from all 8 of the models that were compared. Normal personality traits were endorsed, although abnormal personality traits generally received higher levels of endorsement. The list of endorsed traits was reduced further by organizing the scales into groups based on redundancy within each of 5 broad domains and then selecting within each group the scale that received the highest rating. Conclusions: This list appears to represent each domain in a manner that is comprehensive both in its coverage of the respective domain, as well as in representing particular strengths of each of the alternative dimensional models, at least for the stated preferences of psychiatrists and psychologists.