A critical examination of multidimensionality within the Hypomanic Personality Scale

The Hypomanic Personality Scale (HPS) is a psychometric assessment that identifies bipolar spectrum psychopathology and risk for bipolar disorders. Despite its conceptualization as a unidimensional scale, several studies have attempted to derive an underlying multidimensional structure of the HPS. Given the lack of consensus between these models, and the interest in elucidating the multidimensional structure of bipolar spectrum psychopathology, we attempted to replicate previous multidimensional models of the HPS with a large undergraduate and adult sample (n = 5002). We were unable to successfully replicate these prior models and derived, instead, two competing models of the underlying factor structure of the HPS. However, these models were limited by factors of unequal sizes and questionable content validity. We examined the associations of our two models with questionnaire and interview measures of affect and psychopathology. Ultimately, we concluded that the HPS is best employed in its original, unidimensional form. We recommend that the creation of a multidimensional assessment of bipolar spectrum psychopathology should follow from the development of a theoretically driven, comprehensive multidimensional model, rather than from parsing apart a useful, but largely unidimensional measure, such as the HPS.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2021

Author dc:creator

• Berson, Talia Rebecca

Contributors dc:contributor

• Kwapil, Thomas R

• bipolar spectrum psychopathology
• bipolar disorders
• psychometric assessment
• multidimensional
• factor analysis

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2020 Talia Berson

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/109487

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/109487