BPI The Basic Personality Inventory - Sigma Assessment Systems, Inc.

BPI 

The Basic Personality Inventory 

Douglas N. Jackson, Ph.D. © 1977, 1989, 1996 

Modern Measure of Psychopathology for Adults and Adolescents

Outline 

• About SIGMA Assessment Systems, Inc. 

• About the Author 

• Executive Summary 

• Quick Facts 

• Applications 

• Distinguishing Features 

Click to edit Master subtitle style 

• BPI Scales 

• Sample Report 

• Norms & Reliability 

• Validity 

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About SIGMA Assessment Systems, Inc. 

• Established in 1967 

– Founded by Douglas N. Jackson, Ph.D. 

– Founding member of the Association of Test Publishers 

• International reputation for excellence. 

– SIGMA’s cognitive ability measure, the MAB-II, was used in the selection of 

NASA astronauts, and US Air Force Pilots 

– SIGMA's assessments have been translated into over a dozen languages, and 

SIGMA licenses its Intellectual Property to test publishers throughout the world. 

– The Career Direction Inventory, an assessment developed by SIGMA, is one of the 


most widely used career assessments on the Internet. 

– SIGMA successfully implemented a large-scale global rollout of 360 Degree 

Feedback to over 35,000 employees of DaimlerChrysler. 

• Satisfied clients include: Golf Town, Chapters Indigo Canada, 

Spinx, Kellogg’s, Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Great Clips, IKEA, EZCorp, 

Best Buy, Safeway, Sunswept Resorts, Giant Tiger, Schreiber, Wyndham 

Hotels and Resorts, American Airlines, Shred-It, 

PriceWaterhouseCoopers, US Army, British Airways, and many more. 

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About the Author 

About Dr. Douglas N. Jackson: 

– Former Chair: American Psychological Association’s (APA) Committee 

on Psychological Tests and Assessments. 

– Former President: APA’s Division of Evaluation, Measurement, and 

Statistics; and Society of Multivariate Experimental Psychology. 

– One of a very few US Citizens elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of 

Canada for contributions to science. 

– Delegate to International Test Commission and member of its Executive 

Council. 


– Awarded the "Samuel J. Messick Award" for Distinguished Scientific 

Contributions by APA Division 5 (Evaluation, Measurement, and 

Statistics). 

– Has published over 200 articles in scientific journals and several dozen 

book chapters. 

– Over 3 million people have taken assessments authored by Dr. Jackson. 

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Basic Personality Inventory: 

Executive Summary 

• The BPI consists of 240 true/false items, and may be used 

with both adolescents and adults. 

• The 12 bipolar scales measure broad dimensions of 

personality that relate an individual’s intrapsychic and 

interpersonal functioning. 

• Scale names were chosen to avoid potentially inaccurate 

diagnostic labels. 


• Studies indicate strong support for the reliability and 

validity of the BPI. 

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Quick Facts 

• A multiphasic personality inventory intended for use with 

both clinical and normal populations to identify sources of 

maladjustment and personal strengths. 

• Administration Time: 35 minutes. 

• Reading Level: Grade 5. 

• Appropriate Age Group: 12 and over. 


• Qualifications: Level C. 

• Languages: English, French, and Spanish. 

• Scoring: Hand scoring, mail-in scoring, computer (software) 

scoring, and internet scoring at www.sigmatesting.com. 

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Applications 

• Public institutions, private 

psychological, psychiatric, and 

counseling practices. 

• Juvenile and adult correctional 

facilities and court referrals. 

• Psychological evaluation as part 

of a conditional job offer for 

sensitive positions. 


• Research with alcoholism, 

eating disorders, and juvenile 

delinquency. 

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Distinguishing Features of the BPI: 

Advanced Construction and Innovative Features 

• Preparation of detailed conceptual definitions of trait constructs 

providing broad and representative coverage of the 

psychopathology domain. 

• Carefully selected scale names to avoid directly suggesting 

psychiatric diagnoses or seriously evaluative labels for 

respondents. 

• Highly sophisticated scale construction procedures employed to 

foster scale validities and freedom from response biases. 


• Easy reading level makes it suitable for a variety of adolescent and 

adult populations. 

• Administration is less than half the time required for other popular 

psychopathology measures. 

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Distinguishing Features of the BPI: 

Extensive Interpretative Materials 

• Detailed individual scale considerations based on the professional 

opinions of experienced psychologists. 

• Discussion of the detection of invalid cases and of the role of 

faking and motivated distortion;. 

• Correlations with other well-established measures of 

psychopathology (e.g., the MMPI). 

• Empirically derived profiles representing specific symptoms of 

psychopathology (e.g., delusions, somatic complaints, alcoholism). 


• Profiles for a wide variety of case studies such as dangerous 

psychosis, an appeal for help, teenage rebelliousness, and pre- and 

post treatment for assaultive tendencies. 

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BPI Scales 

• Alienation 

• Anxiety 

• Denial 

• Depression 

• Deviation 


• Hypochondriasis 

• Impulse Expression 

• Persecutory Ideas 

• Self Depreciation 

• Social Introversion 

• Thinking Disorder 

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BPI Sample Report 

• Basic Report includes: 

– Profile of scores on 11 clinical 

scales and 1 critical item scale. 

– Scale descriptions for high and 

low scores. 

– List of critical items endorsed. 

– Summary of raw responses. 

– Interpretive validity 

paragraph. 


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Norms & Reliability of the BPI 

• Norms: 

– Separate adult (N = 1419) and adolescent (N = 2210) norms are 

reported in the manual. Adult norms are based on a North American 

sample using comparisons with U.S. census data. 

• Reliability: 

– Internal consistency reliabilities for the BPI are routinely found to be 

appreciable and stable. In one large psychiatric sample (N = 812), 

KR20 coefficients ranged between .66 and .86 (median = .76). A group 


of normal adults (N = 379) produced values ranging from .61 to .83 

(median = .70), and a college sample (N = 52) gave coefficients ranging 

from .61 to .86 (median = .76). 

– Test-retest reliabilities are similarly acceptable. Two studies (N = 123 

and 168), each with retest intervals of one month, gave a combined 

range of .62 to .87 (median = .77). 

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Validity of the BPI 

• Evidence for convergent and discriminant validity. 

– In a study of 235 substance abusers, BPI-Hypochondriasis correlated 

.73 with MMPI-Hypochondriasis; .55 for BPI-Depression and MMPI- 

Depression; .62 for BPI-Thinking Disorder and MMPI-Schizophrenia; 

and .58 for BPI-Social Introversion and MMPI-Social Introversion. 

• Correlations between BPI scales and clinical ratings (by 

others) on like dimensions provide further support. 


– In a study of 112 psychiatric patients, such correlations ranged from 

.32 to .51 (mean = .40), which compares favorably to an average 

correlation of .12 between the scales and ratings on irrelevant 

dimensions. 

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“The BPI is unique among measures of 

psychopathology, as it assesses both personal 

strengths and areas of maladjustment, is relatively 

short, convenient to score, and suitable for a 

variety of populations and settings.” 


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BPI The Basic Personality Inventory - Sigma Assessment Systems, Inc.

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