Assessment of borderline personality features in population samples: Is the Personality Assessment Inventory-Borderline Features scale measurement invariant across sex and age?

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is more often diagnosed in women than in men, and symptoms tend to decline with age. Using a large community sample, the authors investigated whether sex and age differences in four main features of BPD, measured with the Personality Assessment Inventory-Borderline Features scale (PAI-BOR; Morey, 1991), are a result of measurement bias or if they represent true differences. The PAI-BOR was completed by four Sex × Age groups (N = 6,838). Multigroup confirmatory factor analysis showed that the PAI-BOR is measurement invariant across sex and age. Compared with men, women reported more borderline characteristics for affective instability, identity problems, and negative relationships but not for self-harm. Younger men had higher scores for identity problems and self-harm than did older men. Younger women had higher scores for identity problems and affective instability than did older women. Results suggest that the PAI-BOR can be used to study the etiology of BPD features in population-based samples and to screen for BPD features in clinical settings in both men and women of varying ages. © 2009 American Psychological Association.