Life history of impulsive behavior: development and validation of a new questionnaire.

A self-report version of the Lifetime History of Impulsive Behaviors (LHIB) interview was developed and its psychometric properties examined. Initially, forty-two personality disordered and 20 control subjects completed both the interview (I) and self-report (Q53) versions of the LHIB along with other self-report measures of impulsivity and an assessment of venturesomeness and empathy.The LHIB-Q53 demonstrated good to excellent internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and evidence of convergent and divergent validity. The LHIB-Q53 was then simplified to 20 items and administered to a large population-based sample of adults from the community. Following this, it was administered to nearly 400 subjects with or without histories of Axis I and/or II disorders. The latter two studies demonstrated good to excellent psychometric properties as well as evidence of convergent and divergent validity. Since the LHIB quantifies the occurrence of impulsive behaviors, rather than a self-assessment of a personality trait of impulsivity, we propose that the LHIB-Q20 represents a needed additional assessment of impulsivity for behavioral science research.