Reliability of the Revised Psychopathy Checklist in substance abuse patients.

Abstract

The Psychopathy Checklist (PCL) and the slightly revised Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-R) represent an alternate conceptualization to the antisocial personality disorder formulation of antisociality. The PCL and PCL-R have been found to have high reliability and good predictive validity in prisoner populations. Thus far, almost all published work has been based on prisoners. This study examined the 1-month test-retest reliability of the PCL-R in 88 methadone-maintained male patients as well as the effects of increased information (interview, clinical chart review, partial and complete criminal records) on PCL-R scores and on two diagnostic derivations of the PCL-R. PCL-R scores and diagnostic proportions were not found to differ significantly between baseline and 1 month