The assessment and diagnosis of personality disorders (PDs) has been of great interest to researchers and clinicians. PDs are related with poorer therapy outcomes and increased health service costs. Interviews are quite lengthy and require specialized training, leading to a very high cost of administration. An initial screening with good properties would eliminate the need for detailed assessment in most noncases. We reviewed papers that analyze screening instruments for PDs.

Medline, PsycINFO, and Academic Search Premier were computer-searched for relevant studies. The key words used were screen* and personality disorder*. The references of the obtained journal articles were also examined. Inclusion criterion was providing the necessary information to calculate hit rates and kappas related to gold standards interviews.

26 studies met inclusion criteria. Considerable variation in predictive ability existed among studies Hit rates ranged from 0.53 to 0.94. Kappas ranged from 0.20 to 0.89. Performed analyses showed differences between questionnaires and interviews.

We discuss different options according to the context of application, feasibility, number of items and psychometric properties.