Translation, Content Validity, and Psychometric Evaluation of the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 Brief Form (PID-5-BF) in Standard Arabic

Background: Arabic-speaking populations lack a brief, psychometrically evaluated instrument for assessing maladaptive personality traits within the DSM-5 Alternative Model for Personality Disorders (AMPD). Objective: To translate the Personality Inventory for DSM-5—Brief Form (PID-5-BF) into Standard Arabic and evaluate its content validity, reliability, and factor structure in a Saudi community sample. Methods: The PID-5-BF was translated through a multistep forward–backward procedure with expert panel review. Twenty-five pilot participants rated item clarity and simplicity. The final Arabic version was administered to 328 Saudi adults, and 52 verified pairs completed it twice over a mean interval of 16.1 days. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) tested the a priori five-factor model. Principal axis factoring with Promax rotation and Horn’s parallel analysis were used to examine factor retention. Reliability indices included Cronbach’s alpha and intraclass correlation coefficients [ICC(2,1), absolute agreement]. Results: Content validity was excellent (S-CVI/Ave = 0.93 for clarity; 0.94 for simplicity). CFA showed an acceptable RMSEA (0.068, 90% CI 0.062–0.075) but incremental fit below thresholds (CFI = 0.84; TLI = 0.82; SRMR = 0.12). Parallel analysis retained four factors. Domain alphas ranged from 0.70 to 0.78 (total = 0.89), and domain ICCs were 0.74 to 0.85 (total = 0.88). Antagonism items showed 50–58% floor effects. Conclusions: The standard-Arabic PID-5-BF shows acceptable content validity, internal consistency, and temporal stability, with partial structural support. Further work using ordinal estimation, measurement invariance testing, and external validity assessment is needed before routine clinical adoption.