Linguistic adaptation and validation into Spanish of the Diagnostic Interview for Borderline Personality Disorders-Revised (DIB-R).

OBJECTIVE

This paper describes the linguistic adaptation and psychometric validation into Spanish of the Diagnostic Interview for Borderlines-Revised (DIB-R) scale for diagnosing borderline personality disorder (BPD).

METHODS

A conceptual equivalence approach was undertaken, including forward and backward translations of the scale and patient debriefing in a pilot phase. BPD and control patients were included in the validation study, and all of them were administered the scale by well trained interviewers, blinded to the clinical diagnosis. Reference diagnosis for BPD was done according to DSM-IV criteria. The interview was independently administered in a subset of patients by different interviewer to test inter-rater reliability . Reliability and validity of the instrument were tested by calculating the Cronbach alpha and Guttman split-half coefficients and by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis, kappa agreement coefficient determination and assessment of sensitivity and specificity of the scale.

RESULTS

A cohort of 111 subjects, 84 BPD patients (33.6 +/- 9.3 years) and 27 control subjects (34.9 +/- 9.3 years), were included in the study. A cut-off point > or = 7 showed a kappa agreement coefficient of 0.853 (95% confidence intervals: 0.739-0.967, p < 0.00001). The figures for sensitivity and specificity values were 0.964 (0.899-0.993) and 0.889 (0.708-0.977) respectively. Inter-rater reliability showed a kappa coefficient of 0.783 (p < 0.0001).

CONCLUSION

The Spanish version of the DIB-R showed adequate psychometric properties for diagnosing BPD in Spain.