The 2-Year Test-Retest Reliability of the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised in Methadone Patients

Abstract

The 2-year test-retest reliability of the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) was examined in 200 men and 25 women methadone patients. Stability of the PCL-R was generally good whether it was evaluated as a dichotomous or dimensional measure. Utilizing a diagnostic cutoff score of 25 or more the intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) were.48 for men and.67 for women. For the Total PCL-R score ICCs were.60 and.65 for men and women, respectively. Factor 1 was more reliably measured in women compared to men (.63 vs.43). For men, Factor 1 was significantly less reliable than Factor 2 or the Total score. For women, Factor 2 was significantly less reliable than the Total PCL-R score or Factor 1.

Inter‐rater reliability of the PCL‐R total and factor scores among psychopathic sex offenders: are personality features more prone to disagreement than behavioral features?

“…Depending on the amount of information available, testretest correlations ranged from .71 to .76 for Factor 1, whereas they ranged from .79 to .80 for Factor 2 and from .85 to .89 for the total score. Subsequently, Rutherford et al (1999) reported ICC values for PCL-R scores in a much larger sample of male methadone patients (n ¼ 200) participating in their longitudinal research. At a two-year follow-up, again involving independent evaluations and new interviews, Factor 1 scores were significantly less reliable (ICC ¼ .43) than were Factor 2 scores (ICC ¼ .60) or total scores (ICC ¼ .60).…”

“…A recent review of rater agreement findings from more than 120 PCL-R studies found that about half provided little or no information concerning whether independent interviews were used for the cases used to check rater agreement (Rufino et al, 2009). In only a handful of studies was it clear that rater agreement statistics were based on cases in which both evaluators conducted an independent interview (see, e.g., Levenson, 2004;Murrie, Boccaccini, Johnson, & Janke, 2008;Rutherford, Cacciola, Alterman, McKay, & Cook, 1999;Tyrer et al, 2005). In several of these studies, ICC values were notably lower than those reported in the PCL-R manual.…”

“…Clearly, certain items on the PCL-R require more subjective judgment and clinical intuition (e.g., ''pathological'' lying, failure to accept responsibility) than do others (e.g., juvenile delinquency, criminal versatility, many short-term marital relationships). Generally speaking, it would seem that the ''personality'' items comprising Factor 1 of this rating scale have a greater potential for random or systematic error in their scoring (at the level of the individual examiner) than do those more behaviorally based items comprising Factor 2 (for individual item ICCs supporting this contention, see Hare, 2003, chapter 5, as well as Rutherford et al, 1999). It is noteworthy that, even in studies in which it appears that well trained examiners rely on the same file and interview data, ICCs for Factor 1 of the PCL-R tend to be lower than for Factor 2.…”

A behavioral treatment for opioid-dependent patients with antisocial personality

“…The instability factor includes items related to specific antisocial behaviors and activities . The PCL-R total score has the strongest retest reliability and predictive validity in opioid and other substance dependent samples (McDermott et al, 2000;Rutherford, Cacciola, Alterman, McKay, & Cook, 1999). For the present study, subjects were dichotomized into high (25 or greater total score) and low psychopathy groups (less than 25) as described in the Rutherford et al report (1998).…”

“…PCL-R total scores of 25 or higher were used to operationally define high psychopathy (e.g., Rutherford et al, 1999); number of APD symptoms was dichotomized into low versus high using a median split. Effects of each variable on outcomes were calculated as unadjusted ORs with 95% CIs.…”