Estudio preliminar para la validación de la versión española del Personality Belief Questionnaire

Introduction Dysfunctional beliefs are defined as cognitive schemas that drive an abnormal perception and interpretation of reality, being present in all personality disorders. Beck and Beck developed the Personality Belief Questionnaire (PBQ) in order to measure the degree to which individuals endorse basic beliefs associated with personality disorders, providing unique information about the intensity of the dysfunctional beliefs that must be addressed during treatment. Objective The aims of this study are, first, to develop a Spanish version of the PBQ and to evaluate its psychometric properties in a sample from the normal population, and second, to examine if PBQ's indexed intensity of dysfunctional beliefs may discriminate between subgroups of individuals within the extreme tails of their corresponding personality traits (measured by a gold standard, the MCMI-III). Methods We administered the PBQ and the MCMI-III to a sample of 63 undergraduate students of Spanish nationality. Results Results showed that the Spanish adaptation of the PBQ have sound psychometric properties. Furthermore, we showed that there is a good fit between the personality traits measured with the gold standard and the intensity of dysfunctional beliefs measured with the PBQ, since this questionnaire was able to discriminate between individuals with high vs. low levels of the corresponding personality traits. Conclusions We conclude that the Spanish adaptation of the PBQ presents adequate psychometric properties (in terms of reliability and construct validity) and holds an important potential for application to clinical populations, in which it may assist the treatment process.