Journal of Personality Disorders, 6(2). 117-124, 1992 1992 The Guilford Press THE STRUCTURED CLINICAL INTERVIEW FOR DSM-III-R, AXIS II AND THE MILLON CLINICAL MULTIAXIAL INVENTORY: A CONCURRENT VALIDITY STUDY OF PERSONALITY DISORDERS AMONG ANXIOUS OUTPATIENTS Babette Renneberg, Dianne L. Chambless, Deborah J. Dowdall, James A. Fauerbach, and Edward J. Gracely The purpose of this study was to examine the concurrent validity of personality disorder diagnoses and the interrater reliability of a relatively new instrument for assessment of personality disorders, the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R, Axis II (SCID-II). Diagnoses of agoraphobic outpatients yielded by a standardized interview (SCID-II) and by a self-report questionnaire (Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory, MCMI-II) were compared. The interrater reliability coefficients for the SCID-II with a sample of anxious outpatients were promising: The kappa coefficient for presence or absence of any personality disorder with the SCID-II was .75; for individual personality disorder categories, reliability coefficients ranged from .61 to .81 (median k = .67), with the highest reliability obtained for avoidant personality disorder (k = .81). Agreement between the two instruments was poor to moderate regardless of the criterion set for a diagnosis of personality disorder on the MCMI. Kappas for presence/absence of any personality disorder ranged from .20 to .28. The concurrent validity coefficients for individual disorders or clusters ranged from .06 to .52. These results are congruent with other investigations showing disturbingly little convergence across various instruments for assessment of personality disorders. B. Renneberg is with the Agoraphobia and Anxiety Treatment Center, and Temple Univer sity Medical School. D. L. Chambless is with the American University. D. J. Dowdall and J. A. Fauerbach are with the Agoraphobia and Anxiety Treatment Center. E. J. Gracely is with the Medical College of Pennsylvania. Requests for reprints should be sent to Dianne L. Chambless, PhD, Department of Psychology, The American University, Washington, DC 20016-8062. The study was supported in part by a fellowship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) awarded to Babette Renneberg. The authors wish to thank Thomas Fydrich, PhD, for his valuable comments and assistance in data analysis, and Peggy Gaver for her help in data collection. 117