Validation of the 'Hetero-Anamnestische Persoonlijkheidsvragenlijst' (H.A.P.) in a Belgian psychiatric population. Presented at the annual meeting of the Belgian Association for Psychological Sciences (BAPS).

There is an important lack of diagnostic instruments for personality pathology that are specifically developed for informants, such as close relatives. In an effort to overcome this gap, Barendse and Thissen (2006) developed the 'Hetero-Anamnestische Persoonlijkheidsvragenlijst' (H.A.P.), an informant questionnaire for the screening of personality pathology. The H.A.P. was originally developed for personality research in an elderly psycho-geriatric population, and measures premorbid personality characteristics on a continuum from 'normal' to 'strongly dysfunctional'. Personality characteristics were also theoretically linked to reinforcement styles and sources of Millon's biosocial theory (Millon, 1985). The current study provides a preliminary examination of the psychometric properties of the H.A.P. in a Belgian psychiatric adult population (n=26). Patients completed Dutch authorized versions of the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-III (MCMI-III; Millon, 2006) and patients' close relatives were asked to fill in the H.A.P. The H.A.P. exhibits satisfactory psychometric properties in terms of internal consistency (average alpha =.70). Mean scale scores of our Belgian psychiatric sample revealed values similar to the standardization sample for most of the H.A.P. scales. However, men had higher scores on SOM (d=.91) and women scored higher on ONZ (d=.77), SOM (d=.65), and RIG (d=.75). To examine convergent validity, Pearson correlations between the HAP and the MCMI-III scales were calculated. However, expected correlations between the H.A.P. scales and the clinical personality scales of the MCMI-III could not be confirmed. Given our small sample size, further research is certainly necessary in order to determine the extend to which these preliminary results can be confirmed.