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French adaptation of the Five-Factor Borderline Inventory-Short Form

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Abstract

The purpose of this study was to adapt the short-form version of the Five-Factor Borderline Inventory (FFBI-SF) in French, a 12-domain questionnaire of 48 items assessing Borderline Personality Disorders (BPD). Participants from the general population voluntarily took part in our study and were separated into two samples: a student (n = 335) and a worker sample (n = 162). They completed four questionnaires randomly distributed: a demographic questionnaire, the FFBI-SF, the Big Five Inventory, the McLean Screening Instrument for Borderline Personality Disorder, and the Borderline Symptom List, Short Form. Our results showed acceptable model fit indices for a 12-factor model and acceptable to excellent reliability indices (overall α = .95 and average α of all domains is .78). Strong correlations were found between FFBI-SF and other BPD measures, suggesting good convergent validity. Moreover, compared with other BPD questionnaires, the incremental validity of the FFBI-SF was between 13 and 23%, showing a substantial additional part of variance explained by the FFBI-SF. Our findings provide evidence for a valid and reliable French adaptation of the FFBI-SF. This study fits with a growing need for clinicians and researchers to benefit from multifacet, accessible, and quickly completed tools that assess subclinical BPD.

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Notes

  1. It is important to note DSM-V efforts to adopt a transition from a categorical to a dimensional approach. For instance, an alternative hybrid model has been proposed for personality disorders (see DSM-V, Section III). Besides, DSM-V mentioned that, in coming years, dimensional approaches will probably supplement or supersede current categorical approaches.

  2. DeShong et al. (2016) performed IRT analyses and found that the four-item scale was the best option in comparison with the three- and five-scales.

  3. We also run the CFA on the whole sample (S1 + S2) and found quite similar fit indices (χ2/Df = 3.14; SRMR = .0591; RMSEA = .0656; CFI = .832; TLI = .813).

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Dr. Hilary DeShong for her precious help.

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This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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Correspondence to Julian A. Nasello.

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All procedures performed in this study were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The ethical committee of the Department of Psychology of the University of Liège (Belgium) approved the study, reference n°: 1920–92.

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The online data file is available on the following DOI link: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/D3GJH.

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The original vision of this article has been revised. Table 1 and Table 2 has been corrected.

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Nasello, J.A., Blavier, A. & Triffaux, JM. French adaptation of the Five-Factor Borderline Inventory-Short Form. Curr Psychol 42, 5886–5897 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-01878-2

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