What is the special issue about?
The most recent special issue of Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment, titled “Methodological and Quantitative Issues in the Study of Personality Pathology,” features the work of leading scholars on important methodological considerations for personality disorder research. Among the salient topics addressed in the special issue are registration (before, during, and after a study; Benning & Smith, 2023) as part of the open science movement, which is aimed at increasing the robustness and replicability of psychological science; approaches to and decision points in factor analyses (Watts et al., 2023); the pros and cons of different sampling approaches (e.g., convenience, clinical, community; Vanwoerden et al., 2023); ecological momentary assessment (Kaurin et al., 2023); the use of multimodal approaches in studying interpersonal dynamics (Rau et al., 2023); how to approach heterogeneity (Watson & Clark, 2023); and best practices in designing and conducting clinical trials in personality disorder research (Stoffers-Winterling et al., 2023).
Of course, no single journal issue can fully cover a subject as broad as “methods and statistics” in any field, but the goal was to include articles on topics that would be of particular interest to personality disorder researchers working to improve their studies’ rigor and replicability. Although this special issue focused on topics related to the study of personality disorders, the majority of the articles have relevance that extends well past this content area. As an example, Burchett et al. (2023) wrote about the need to screen one’s data for response validity, challenges associated with doing so, as well as approaches that can help with this process. to screening one’s data for response validity. Similarly, Vize et al. (2023) discussed the immense statistical power required to test for interactions, which is an issue that is relevant to all branches of psychology, given the relative ubiquity of interest in and tests for moderation. Ultimately, the special issue articles make meaningful contributions across psychology and allied behavioral sciences.
What is the significance of the issue?
The understanding of personality pathology is largely predicated on the robustness and validity of its underlying empirical literature. To the extent that this literature can be improved, the field will progress. To be clear, we are not saying that our area of research is especially beleaguered by methodological and quantitative problems but rather that researchers in all areas should consider how to improve their current practices. In fact, this area of research has many scholars developing and using sophisticated methodological and quantitative approaches that have broad relevance to psychology. This special issue is, in part, a way to highlight their work.
In terms of improving research practices, the special issue articles have a number of suggestions. These include registering methodological and analytic decisions before examining study data to limit undue and unreported “researcher degrees of freedom” (Benning & Smith, 2023); screening data for careless, inattentive, or purposefully invalid responding (Burchett et al., 2023); using methods, like ecological momentary assessment, that allow for the analysis of both between- and within-person relations (Kaurin et al., 2023); innovating developmental research (Hofmans et al., 2023); incorporating self- and other perceptions of personality into measurement approaches (Rau et al., 2023); and improving methodology in experimental personality disorder research (Hepp et al., 2023). A particularly important and timely article is by Rodriguez-Seijas et al. (2023), who challenge researchers in this field to think deeply and critically about how to conceptualize, assess, and diagnose personality disorders in minoritized populations. They implore psychologists to consider how predominant models of psychopathology in general and personality disorders more specifically situate the pathology within the individual while ignoring or minimizing vital societal contexts (e.g., discrimination and violence).
Tell us about a few key takeaways.
- Register your studies (e.g., with OSFopens in new window). It is not hard and may well improve the field.
- Make sure your sampling approaches are appropriate and relevant to your research question.
- Consider whether contemporary personality disorder models are sufficiently sensitive to factors related to minoritized populations and how more inclusive and contextualized accounts may be developed.
- When conducting factor analyses, run them multiple ways to test how seemingly minor decisions might affect substantive conclusions.
- Screen your data for response validity prior to data analyses.
- If you are planning to test for moderation, make sure your study is sufficiently powered (with power requirements much higher than those required for main effects) while being mindful that most interactions are relatively small.
- Many personality disorders or personality disorder domains have interpersonal etiologies and/or consequences. Consider methodological approaches that can elucidate interpersonal processes, such as ecological momentary assessment or round-robin designs that facilitate interactions and allow for the collection of multimodal data.
- Personality and personality pathology arise relatively early in life and often but do not always persist to some degree across the lifespan. Researchers in the field should focus greater attention on issues of risk and resilience, stability versus change, and the factors (e.g., contextual issues or treatment) that may encourage or enable change over time.
- Consider whether group comparisons (e.g., borderline vs. major depression vs. healthy control) are appropriate given the greater power of dimensional approaches and that most personality disorders are multidimensional in nature. Such comparative designs may have outlived their usefulness in most cases.
- Pay greater attention to the breadth of psychological functioning beyond just negative valence in research domain criteria terms. Similarly, as a field, we should work to attend to types of personality pathology beyond borderline personality disorder, given the predominance of work on this one construct.
- The quality of clinical trials related to personality disorders can and should improve once researchers devote greater attention to the breadth of personality problems, use larger and more inclusive samples (that allow one to test for important moderators), and pay attention to factors that cut across specialized treatment toward more generalist approaches.
What are some practical implications of the articles featured in the issue?
If some of the recommendations put forth in these special issue articles are adopted, knowledge of personality pathology could grow exponentially. Personality and personality pathology domains are increasingly recognized for their broad relevance given that modern models of psychopathology, like the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (Kotov et al., 2017), explicitly recognize their breadth and organizing role. We are optimistic that continued empirical and theoretical focus on the topics explored in this special issue can yield meaningful benefits. We hope that this special issue sets new standards by which current practices can be evaluated and improved where relevant and possible.
This article is in the Clinical Psychology topic area. View more articles in the Clinical Psychology topic area.