Clinical instrument

Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5)—Adult

A 220-item self-report measure of maladaptive personality traits aligned with the DSM-5 Alternative Model of Personality Disorders. Each item is rated 0–3 for how well it describes the respondent. Items score 25 lower-order trait facets; specified triplets of facets aggregate into the five broad higher-order domains of Negative Affect, Detachment, Antagonism, Disinhibition, and Psychoticism. The PID-5 is dimensional: higher scores indicate greater trait elevation. It has no diagnostic cutoff and yields trait profiles, not diagnoses.

This is a clinical instrument. It is not publicly self-administered — a clinician assigns it through a secure patient link.

At a glance

Items
220
Response scale
4-point (Very False or Often False … Very True or Often True)
Est. time
~31 min
Subscales
25
Norms
Referenced (N = 264)
Access
Clinician patient-link

What it measures

The Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (Krueger, Derringer, Markon, Watson, & Skodol, 2012) is the 220-item adult self-report operationalizing the maladaptive-trait model of the DSM-5 Alternative Model of Personality Disorders. Each item is rated 0–3 for how well it describes the respondent, and items aggregate into twenty-five trait facets that in turn combine into the model's five broad domains.

Scoring and interpretation

Scoring follows the American Psychiatric Association's PID-5 Adult key: sixteen designated items are reverse-coded, each facet is the sum of its items, and each domain aggregates its three contributing facets. The instrument is dimensional — higher scores mean greater elevation — and has no diagnostic cutoff, so results are read as a trait profile under clinical judgment. The APA permits reproduction without permission by researchers and by clinicians for use with their patients.

Subscales

Emotional Lability 7 items

Anxiousness 9 items

Separation Insecurity 7 items

Withdrawal 10 items

Anhedonia 8 items

Intimacy Avoidance 6 items

Manipulativeness 5 items

Deceitfulness 10 items

Grandiosity 6 items

Irresponsibility 7 items

Impulsivity 6 items

Distractibility 9 items

Unusual Beliefs & Experiences 8 items

Eccentricity 13 items

Perceptual Dysregulation 12 items

Attention Seeking 8 items

Callousness 14 items

Depressivity 14 items

Hostility 10 items

Perseveration 9 items

Restricted Affectivity 7 items

Rigid Perfectionism 10 items

Risk Taking 14 items

Submissiveness 4 items

Suspiciousness 7 items

Example item

“I don’t get as much pleasure out of things as others seem to.”

Very False or Often FalseSometimes or Somewhat FalseSometimes or Somewhat TrueVery True or Often True

Illustrative only. During administration items are presented one screen-set at a time; response-key direction is never shown to respondents.

Scoring & interpretation

Item responses are summed within each scale (reverse-keyed items recoded first) and expressed as a population percentile against the cited reference sample, with a reliability-based confidence range where α is published.

Psychometrics & norms

ScaleMSDNαMetric
Emotional Lability0.940.74264per-item mean
Anxiousness1.020.73264per-item mean
Separation Insecurity0.800.68264per-item mean
Withdrawal1.010.72264per-item mean
Anhedonia0.890.64264per-item mean
Intimacy Avoidance0.610.65264per-item mean
Manipulativeness0.800.67264per-item mean
Deceitfulness0.520.54264per-item mean
Grandiosity0.820.58264per-item mean
Irresponsibility0.390.49264per-item mean
Impulsivity0.770.57264per-item mean
Distractibility0.860.69264per-item mean
Unusual Beliefs & Experiences0.640.63264per-item mean
Eccentricity0.820.76264per-item mean
Perceptual Dysregulation0.440.48264per-item mean
Attention Seeking0.810.65264per-item mean
Callousness0.400.50264per-item mean
Depressivity0.530.62264per-item mean
Hostility0.910.67264per-item mean
Perseveration0.820.62264per-item mean
Restricted Affectivity0.970.56264per-item mean
Rigid Perfectionism1.050.68264per-item mean
Risk Taking1.050.51264per-item mean
Submissiveness1.170.66264per-item mean
Suspiciousness0.950.58264per-item mean

Miller, J. D., Bagby, R. M., Hopwood, C. J., Simms, L. J., & Lynam, D. R. (2022). Normative data for the PID-5. Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment (open access, PMC10052968), Table 1 — U.S. normative representative sample (N = 264; data from Krueger et al., 2012), verbatim 220-item PID-5 (0–3 response scale). Reference values are per-item facet means (M / SD shown with each facet). The source reports no facet-level reliability for this sample, so no confidence range is shown. Domain aggregates are not norm-referenced (the published domain score is a mean of facet means, a different metric from the item-level aggregate reported here).

Source & citation

Krueger, R. F., Derringer, J., Markon, K. E., Watson, D., & Skodol, A. E. (2012). Initial construction of a maladaptive personality trait model and inventory for DSM-5. Psychological Medicine, 42, 1879–1890.

Scoring. Scoring follows the American Psychiatric Association PID-5 Adult scoring key: the items 7, 30, 35, 58, 87, 90, 96, 97, 98, 131, 142, 155, 164, 177, 210, and 215 are reverse-coded (3→0, 2→1, 1→2, 0→3), each facet score is the sum of its items, and each domain aggregates its three contributing facets. The instrument is dimensional — higher scores indicate greater elevation — and has no diagnostic cutoff.

Copyright ©2013 American Psychiatric Association. All Rights Reserved. This material can be reproduced without permission by researchers and by clinicians for use with their patients.

References

  1. Krueger, R. F., Derringer, J., Markon, K. E., Watson, D., & Skodol, A. E. (2012). Initial construction of a maladaptive personality trait model and inventory for DSM-5. Psychological Medicine, 42, 1879–1890.