Reliability and Factor Structure of the Dutch Language Version of Hare's Psychopathy Checklist-Revised

Abstract

The present study examined the interrater and internal reliability and factor structure of the Dutch language version of the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R; Hare, 1991) in a sample of 107 patients admitted to a forensic psychiatric hospital. In addition, we evaluated the potential role of two different information sources, real-life interview versus videotaped interview, when scoring the PCL-R. Interrater reliabilities of individual items and the PCL-R total score were good to excellent. Good agreement on the categorical diagnosis of psychopathy was also obtained (weighted Cohen's k = .63 for simultaneous comparison of three raters). The internal consistency of the PCL-R was found to be high, as indicated by a Cronbach's alpha of 0.87, with an alpha of 0.83 for both Factor 1 and Factor 2. Comparisons between real-life and videotaped interview demonstrated that the information source did not influence the raters' coding. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) indicated that the two-factor structure obtained by Hare (1991) in the standardization samples did not fit the current data well. CFA also failed to confirm the three-factor model identified by Cooke and Michie (2001). Exploratory principal components analysis using oblique rotation extracted two main factors, which accounted for 44% of the variance. It is concluded that the Dutch language version of the PCL-R can be reliably rated by trained professionals, its factor structure resembles the traditional two-factor model to some extent, and future research should include larger samples of different populations such as prisoners and general psychiatric patients.