The Personality Deviance Scales: Their development, associations, factor structure and restructuring

The development of the Personality Deviance Scales (PDS) and their concepts of extrapunitiveness, intropunitiveness and dominance are reviewed. The use of the PDS in psychiatric and medical settings is reviewed. Although the PDS and their related psychological concepts are relatively widely used and relate to mental and physical health outcomes, the psychometric properties of the PDS have never been studied at the item level. The factor structure of the PDS is reported for 1514 people (774 males, 740 females) sampled randomly from the older population. Whereas some of the six primary scales of the PDS emerge clearly from an oblique factor analysis, the three secondary scales were not retrieved. A two factor solution involving 17 of the 36 items is provided. These new factors assess hostility and submissiveness/low self-confidence.