ABSTRACT
This study examines the structure of the Comprehensive Assessment of Psychopathic Personality (CAPP) from a card sort perspective. The CAPP is a lexically based construct map of psychopathy comprising 33 symptoms organized by its developers into 6 broad functional domains of personality (i.e., Attachment, Behavioral, Cognitive; Dominance; Emotional, Self). Groups of mental health workers and students were asked to sort the CAPP symptoms into the model's 6 proposed domains. Overall, both mental health workers and students were able to categorize the symptoms speedily and intuitively according to model. This suggests that the CAPP model's hierarchical structure is plausible, and that the lexical nature of the model is successful in facilitating people's ability to understand features of psychopathy in a way that requires limited cognitive effort. Together, these findings support the validity of the CAPP model as a lexically based concept map of psychopathy. Yet, some exceptions to the overall pattern of agreement with model were identified.
Subject(s)
Antisocial Personality Disorder/psychology , Models, Psychological , Personality , Adult , Female , Humans , Male , Middle Aged , Personality Assessment , Psychometrics , Young AdultABSTRACT
This study is the first to our knowledge to examine the cross-language consistency across the original version of the Comprehensive Assessment of Psychopathy (CAPP) and a translated version. The CAPP is a lexically based construct map of psychopathy comprising 33 symptoms from 6 broad domains of personality functioning. English-language CAPP prototypicality ratings from 124 mental health workers were compared with ratings from 211 Norwegian mental health workers using the Norwegian translation. High agreement was found across languages in regard to which symptoms where perceived as central to psychopathy or not. Multigroup confirmatory factor analyses (MGCFA) indicated that, overall, the symptoms had similar associations with the 6 proposed underlying dimensions across the 2 language versions. Finally, in general, the probability for a given prototypicality rating on an individual symptom was similar across language version samples at the same level of the underlying trait, as analyzed with Item Response Theory (IRT). Together these findings lend support to the validity of the construct of psychopathy, the validity of the CAPP as a concept map of psychopathy, and the validity of the Norwegian translation of the CAPP.
Subject(s)
Antisocial Personality Disorder/diagnosis , Models, Psychological , Personality Assessment/standards , Psychometrics/standards , Surveys and Questionnaires/standards , Adult , Female , Humans , Male , Middle Aged , Psychometrics/methods , Reproducibility of ResultsABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Recent studies have suggested that functional classifications of aggression should be used to improve the understanding of the heterogeneity of aggression and its management, among inpatients in psychiatric hospitals. AIMS: Our aim was to examine a theoretically derived three-factor model for conceptualising aggressive incidents by inpatients as irritable, instrumental or defensive. METHODS: As part of the routine assessments in a forensic psychiatric high security ward, staff filled out a questionnaire on motives for aggression after all violent incidents. A total of 1652 incidents from 28 patients were analysed by means of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. RESULTS: Support was found for the three-factor model. For the most part, the scale items loaded on the factors as predicted, and the model was able to explain 61% of the data variance. Irritable incidents were the most common, but elevated scores for instrumental characteristics were found as well. High psychopathy scores were associated with incidents scoring high values on both irritable and instrumental dimensions, and low values on the defensive dimensions. CONCLUSIONS: Confirming these three dimensions of inpatient aggressive incidents may help caregivers' understanding of aggressive behaviour. If confirmed in future studies, this dimensional approach may prove useful for the management of aggressive inpatients.
Subject(s)
Aggression/psychology , Hospitals, Psychiatric/statistics & numerical data , Inpatients/psychology , Motivation , Adult , Aggression/classification , Antisocial Personality Disorder , Attitude of Health Personnel , Factor Analysis, Statistical , Female , Forensic Psychiatry , Humans , Male , Models, Theoretical , Perception , Psychiatric Status Rating Scales , Surveys and QuestionnairesABSTRACT
Cooke and colleagues recently developed the lexically based model of psychopathy named the Comprehensive Assessment of Psychopathic Personality (CAPP, Cooke, Hart, Logan, & Michie, 2004). The current study was the first to evaluate aspects of the validity of a translated version of the CAPP model, which comprises 33 symptoms from six domains of personality functioning. Prototypicality ratings from 796 Norwegian community residents, forensic mental health professionals, and corrections professionals were obtained. Most CAPP symptoms were evaluated as highly prototypical of psychopathy by all three groups. Symptoms from the Self, Dominance, and Attachment domains were perceived as more prototypical than those from the Behavioral domain. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) indicated that two CAPP domains were unidimensional whereas evidence of unidimensionality was somewhat weaker for the other domains, but improved substantially after removal of problematic symptoms. Overall, the findings support the content validity of the CAPP model. This may have relevance to the current considerations regarding reformulation of the criteria for Antisocial Personality Disorder in DSM-V.
