Analysis of the personality assessment inventory among male mentally ill prison inmates

The Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI, Morey, 1991) is designed to measure a variety of clinical and personality constructs in adults. It is currently being used for this purpose among male psychiatric prison inmates. However, it has not been validated with this population. One focus of this study was to explore the psychometric properties of the PAI among this population.

The PAI is also currently being administered to male psychiatric prison inmates to help clinicians identify those at risk for suicide. Another focus of this study was to explore the PAI's utility for differentiating between non-lethal suicide attemptors and non-attemptors in this population.

In Part I of this study, confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses were conducted on a sample of adult male psychiatric prison inmates to assess the fit of Morey's (1991) PAI factor solution to this sample. Results indicated that Morey's solution represented a poor fit to this sample. A revised factor solution was obtained for this sample of adult mentally ill prison inmates.

In Part II of this study, multivariate analyses of variance and discriminant function analyses were conducted on the sample to detect meaningful differences between non-lethal suicide attemptors and non-attemptors on the revised factor solution scales. Results indicated that the scales did not adequately discriminate between the groups.

Results of this study reinforce the unique characteristics of the psychiatric prison population and highlight the need for further exploration into this population.