Objective       To develop the questionnaire for screening soldiers’ histrionic personality propensity for military personnel.  Methods       The pre-test questionnaire was established by selecting items from currently existing scales based on clinical experience and review of research literature

and approved by experts. Four hundred soldiers were participated in this investigation by taking the pretest questionnaire and personality diagnostic questionnaire-4th edition plus (PDQ-4+) for histrionic personality disorder. SCID-Ⅱ interview was additionally given for soldiers who were PDQ-4+ positive. By carrying out exploratory factor analysis (EFA)

the pre-test questionnaire’s construction as well as its discrimination

reliability

validity

sensitivity and specificity were tested. In addition

receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used for setting up the cutoff for finalizing the questionnaire. ResultsBased on experts’ evaluation

37 items were valid

30 were partly controversial and 25 were invalid in the pretest questionnaire. After modification

all of the items were considered as intelligible by above 90% soldiers in comprehension test

except items 32

41 and 51. The questionnaire was categorized in 6 factors after EFA: variability

relationship cognition

superficial

self-center

frustrated reactions and flirt behaviors. All of these 6 factors could explain 41.08% variation

and each single factor could explain 3.43%~18.40% variation. Discrimination analysis showed that 6 items were poorly distinguished and 18 items with comparatively better discrimination were adjustable. The reliability and validity of questionnaire could be accepted (Cronbach’s α was 0.776

half reliability coefficient was 0.625

and validity coefficient was 0.357

P0.05). The area under the curve (AUC) was 0.910 (P0.05) by ROC analysis. Due to the result that the sensitivity and specificity were 0.848 and 0.875 at score 31.5

0.881 and 0.750 at score 32.5

respectively

and score 32 was chosen as the cut-off of the questionnaire.  Conclusion      These results suggest that our developed questionnaire can be useful for screening histrionic personality propensity of soldiers.