Respondent psychopathology and interpretive accuracy of the Personality Inventory for Children: the evaluation of a "most reasonable" assumption.

This study investigates the relationship between maternal psychopathology and the validity of the Personality Inventory for Children (PIC). Specifically, we tested the hypothesis that psychopathology in the parent informant limits the ability of the resulting scale scores to predict actuarially derived descriptions of child emotional and behavior disorders. Mothers of 223 children and adolescents who had been referred for an evaluation to a child psychiatry service completed the PIC. These mothers also completed the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). The sample of mothers and their children was divided into two subsamples according to the mother's MMPI profile: within normal limits and clinically elevated. Nineteen factor dimensions scores derived from these separate behavior rating forms served as external criteria. Analyses indicated that maternal psychopathology, as represented by MMPI scale elevations, did not moderate or limit the predictive accuracy of PIC scales.