The ‘four As’: a common framework for normal and abnormal personality?

An item-level factor analysis of the personality disorder questionnaire from the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R (SCID-II) completed by 400 students is presented. The analysis used tetrachoric correlations and produced three- and eight-factor solutions. The former solution displays readily interpretable associations with Eysenckʹs personality scales, whilst the latter indicates that some of the personality disorders defined in the DSM-III-R classification can be recovered from the items. A higher-order analysis of the eight-factor solution gives four factors consistent with the antisocial, asocial, asthenic and anankastic factors found in previous work, suggesting that this structure may provide a useful broad description of disordered personality traits in non-clinical and clinical domains. These factors have readily interpretable associations with Eysenckʹs scales, providing evidence for overlap between personality disorder and the dimensions of normal personality.