[The Dependent Personality Questionnaire (DPQ): French translation and validation study in a population of 138 hospitalized psychiatric patients]

Abstract

Introduction: Dependent personality disorder is a new diagnosis introduced in the third version of the DSM (DSM-III). Contrary to other disorders of personality, as the borderline or the schizotypal personalities, there are no specific interviews or questionnaires focusing on dependent personality. Thus the study of dependent personality disorder requires the use of global interviews or questionnaire as the SCID -II or SIDP-IV. Recently, Tyrer and colleagues (2004) have proposed an 8-item questionnaire, the DPQ (Dependent Personality Questionnaire). Each item of the DPQ is rated from 0 to 3 with a total score ranging from 0 to 24. Using a sample of 30 psychiatric patients presenting various diagnoses and a dependent personality disorder for the half of the sample, the authors have determined the cutoff score allowing the diagnosis of DSM-IV Dependent Personality Disorder. A cutoff of 10 was associated with the best sensitivity (87.5%), specificity (87.5%) and positive predictive value (87.5%). Moreover, the value of the Youden coefficient (Sensitivity+Specificity - 100) was 75.

Objective: The aim of the study was to present the French version of the DPQ and to determine its psychometric properties as well as the cutoff score.

Methods: One hundred and thirty-eight psychiatric inpatients (97 females, 41 males) with a mean age of 42.26 years were included in the study. The patients were hospitalized in an inpatients unit receiving mood disorders, neurotic disorders or suicide attempters. The subjects filled out the French versions of the DPQ and the Personality Disorders Questionnaire of Hyler, PDQ-4+. Using the PDQ-4+ two groups were built: 25 subjects filled out the diagnoses of dependent personality disorder and 20 subjects did not meet any criteria of dependent personality disorder. Then, for different values of the DPQ, sensitivity, specificity and positive predictive value and Youden indicia (Sensitivity+Specificity - 100) were calculated.

Results: The best values of Youden indicia (74) were obtained for the cutoff of 13 on the DPQ. The corresponding sensitivity, specificity and positive predictive value were respectively 84, 90 and 91.3%.

Conclusion: The French version of the DPQ is now available and permits detection of dependent personality in French populations.

Limitations: Our results must be replicated using structured interviews of personality disorder instead of questionnaires (PDQ-4+) and other samples with different prevalence of dependent personality disorders must be used to test the potential cutoff scores of the DPQ.