Davis, Allison (2017) Base Rates for the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) in Personal Injury Claimants. Honours thesis, University of Southern Queensland. (Unpublished)
Abstract
The Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) is a 344-item self-report inventory designed to evaluate a wide variety of clinically relevant symptoms, behaviours, and attitudes. The PAI consists of more than 50 scales, subscales, and indices that evaluate response inconsistency, symptom validity, and clinical conditions such as anxiety, depression, substance use, aggression, suicidality, traumatic stress, and borderline and antisocial personality features. The low reading level, relative brevity, and lack of item overlap on scales has made the PAI a popular choice in Australia particularly in evaluating personal injury claimants (PIC) in the medico-legal setting. However, to date, PAI base rates for PIC have not been reported which impacts on the applicability of this test in the medico-legal setting. PAI data was compiled from 682 (260 females, 422 males) claimant cases assessed within a medico-legal practice in Brisbane, Australia. Cases ranged in age from 18 to 82 years and between 6 and 30 years of education. Base rates were computed for all scales and indices including internal consistency coefficients, means, standard deviations, and frequency of elevation and compared to the PAI standardisation sample. The results show the PAI has strong internal consistency for the claimant sample. Additionally, potential misinterpretations of test findings in relation to indicators of response bias were examined due to their importance in medico-legal assessments. Overall the results support the use of the PAI for psychosocial assessment for PIC. The implications of the PAI base rates in the medico-legal setting were discussed to better inform clinical decision-making when assessing PIC.
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| Item Type: | Thesis (Non-Research) (Honours) |
|---|---|
| Item Status: | Live Archive |
| Additional Information: | Current UniSQ staff and students can request access to this thesis. Please email research.repository@unisq.edu.au with a subject line of SEAR thesis request and provide: Name of the thesis requested and Your name and UniSQ email address |
| Faculty/School / Institute/Centre: | Historic - Faculty of Health, Engineering and Sciences - School of Psychology and Counselling (1 Jan 2015 - 31 Dec 2021) |
| Supervisors: | Lucille Douglas; Graeme Senior |
| Qualification: | Bachelor of Science (Honours) |
| Date Deposited: | 20 Aug 2025 01:24 |
| Last Modified: | 20 Aug 2025 01:24 |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Personal injury claimants; Personality Assessment Inventory; base rates; assessment; personality; psychopathology; response bias |
| Fields of Research (2008): | 17 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences > 1799 Other Psychology and Cognitive Sciences > 179999 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences not elsewhere classified |
| Fields of Research (2020): | 52 PSYCHOLOGY > 5299 Other psychology > 529999 Other psychology not elsewhere classified |
| URI: | https://sear.unisq.edu.au/id/eprint/52258 |
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