Description
This brief measure was normed on 620 individuals (ages 18 years and older) from the general population. It facilitates the assessment of critical psychological issues in individuals who have personality-level difficulties and/or a history of significant childhood trauma. The IASC is an ideal component of a comprehensive assessment of adult psychopathology. It helps to identify specific targets for treatment, such as identity disturbance or affect regulation problems; to predict potential problems that may arise during psychotherapy, such as idealization-devaluation or easily triggered abandonment issues, and to provide clinical data to corroborate diagnostic hypotheses, especially those involving dysfunctional personality traits or disorders. The IASC consists of seven 9-item scales, two of which have subscales, and it requires a 6th-grade reading level. Respondents rate the frequency of occurrence of each symptom item on a 5-point scale from Never to Very Often over the prior 6 months. The Professional Manual provides information on the development, administration, scoring, interpretation, and psychometric characteristics of the IASC, as well as normative data from the general population and validity data from the university student and clinical samples. Test results can help to corroborate and explore an Axis-II diagnosis (e.g., Borderline Personality Disorder) and improve treatment response by identifying specific areas of self-other difficulty that might interfere with the client-therapist relationship.