Background: With the development of multidisciplinary addictology teams, the ability of an addictologist to reliably assess personality psychopathology can be considered an important prerequisite that significantly enters the process of treatment planning.
Aims: Verification of the reliability and validity of the assessment of personality psychopathology in master's students of Addictology (addiction science) based on the Structured Interview of Personality Organization (STIPO) scoring course.
Methods: 31 Master's students of Addictology independently evaluated 7 STIPO protocols based on recordings. The presented patients were unknown to the students. The resulting scores of students were compared with 1. expert scores of a clinical psychologist with extensive experience with the STIPO; 2. scores of 4 psychologists without previous experience with the STIPO who have attended the course; 3. information on previous clinical experience and education of the students. The comparison of scores was performed using a coefficient of intraclass correlation, a social relation model analysis and linear mixed-effect models.
Results: Students demonstrated a high degree of inter-rater reliability with a significant degree of agreement in patient assessments, as well as a high to satisfactory degree of validity in the STIPO assessments. An increase in validity after the individual phases of the course was not proven. Their evaluations were generally independent of previous education, as well as diagnostic and therapeutic experience.
Conclusions: The STIPO seems to be a useful tool to facilitate the communication of personality psychopathology between independent experts within multidisciplinary addictology teams. Training in the STIPO can be a useful addition to the study curriculum.
Keywords: Addictology students; Clinical judgment; Dual diagnoses; Personality organization; Personality psychopathology; STIPO.
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