Background: Current concepts and measures of personality disorder are in many respects unsatisfactory.
Aims: To establish agreement between two contrasting measures of personality disorder, and to compare subject-informant agreement on each. To examine the extent to which trait abnormality can be separated from interpersonal and social role dysfunction.
Method: Fifty-six subjects and their closest informants were interviewed and rated independently. Personality functioning was assessed using a modified Personality Assessment Schedule (M-PAS), and the Adult Personality Functioning Assessment (APFA).
Results: Subject-informant agreement on the M-PAS was moderately good, and agreement between the M-PAS and the APFA, across and within subjects and informants, was comparable to that for the M-PAS. This was equally the case when M-PAS trait plus impairment scores and trait abnormality scores were used.
Conclusions: The M-PAS and the APFA are probably assessing similar constructs. Trait abnormalities occur predominantly in an interpersonal context and could be assessed within that context.